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THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW 



CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT 



AND OTHER TALES 



BY 

RUDYARD KIPLING 



New York 
THE LOVELL COMPANY 

23 DuANE Street 



mo 






CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

The Phantom 'Rickshaw 7 

My Own True Ghost Story 43 

The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 56 

The Man Who Would be King 92 

City of the Dreadful Night i 



PREFACE 



This is not exactly a book of downright 
ghost-stories as the cover makes believe. It 
is rather a collection of facts that never quite 
explained themselves. All that the collector 
is certain of is, that one man insisted upon 
dying because he believed himself to be 
haunted ; another man either made up a won- 
derful lie and stuck to it, or visited a very 
strange place ; while the third man was in- 
dubitably crucified by some person or persons 
unknown, and gave an extraordinary account 
of himself. 

The peculiarity of ghost-stories is that they 
are never told first-hand. I have managed, 
with infinite trouble, to secure one exception 
to this rule. It is not a very good specimen, 
but you can credit it from beginning to end. 
The other three stories you must take or 
trust ; as I did. 

RUDYARD KIPLING. 



THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW 



May no ill dreams disturb my rest, 
Nor Powers of Darkness me molest. 

Evening Hymn. 

One of the few advantages that India has 
over England is a great Knowability. After 
five years' service a man is directly or in- 
directly acquainted with the two or three hun- 
dred Civilians in his Province, all the Messes 
of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries, 
and some fifteen hundred other people of the 
non-ofiicial caste. In ten years his knowl- 
edge should be doubled, and at the end of 
twenty he knows, or knows something about, 
every Englishman in the Empire, and may 
travel anywhere and everywhere without pay- 
ing hotel-bills. 

Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as 
a right have, even within my memory, blunted 
this open-heartedness, but none the less to- 
day, if you belong to the Inner Circle and 
are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all 
houses are open to you, and our small world 
is very, very kind and helpful. 

7 



8 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of 
Kumaon some fifteen years ago. He meant 
to stay two nights, but was knocked down by 
rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorgan- 
ized Polder's establishment, stopped Polder's 
work, and nearly died in Polder's bedroom. 
Polder behaves as though he had been placed 
under eternal obligation by Rickett, and 
yearly sends the little Ricketts a box of pres- 
ents and toys. It is the same everywhere. 
The men who do not take the trouble to con- 
ceal from you their opinion that you are an 
incompetent ass, and the women who blacken 
your character and misunderstand your wife's 
amusements, will work themselves to the 
bone in your behalf if you fall sick or into 
serious trouble. 

Heatherlegh, the Doctor, kept, in addition 
to his regular practise, a hospital on his pri- 
vate account — an arrangement of loose boxes 
for Incurables, his friend called it — but it was 
really a sort of fitting-up shed for craft that 
had been damaged by stress of weather. The 
weather in India is often sultry, and since the 
tale of bricks is always a fixed quantity, and 
the only liberty allowed is permission to work 
overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally 
break down and become as mixed as the met- 
aphors in this sentence. 

Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever 
was, and his invariable prescription to all his 
patients is, " lie low, go slow, and keep cool." 
He says that more men are killed by over- 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 9 

work than the importance of this world justi- 
fices. He maintains that overwork slew 
Pansay, who died under his hands about three 
years ago. He has, of course, the right to 
speak authoritatively, and he laughs at my 
theory that there was a crack in Pansay's 
head and a little bit of the Dark World came 
through and pressed him to death. " Pansay 
went off the handle," says Heatherlegh, 
" after the stimulus of long leave at Home. 
He may or he may not have behaved like a 
blackguard to Mrs. Keith-Wessington. My 
notion is that the work of the Katabundi Set- 
tlement ran him off his legs, and that he took 
to brooding and making much of an ordinary 
P. & O. flirtation. He certainly was engaged 
to Miss Mannering, and she certainly broke 
off the engagement. Then he took a feverish 
chill and all that nonsense about ghosts de- 
veloped. Overwork started his illness, kept it 
alight, and killed him, poor devil. Write him 
off to the System — one man to take the work 
of two and a half men." 

I do not believe this. I used to sit up 
with Pansay sometimes when Heatherlegh 
was called out to patients, and I happened to 
be within claim. The man would make me 
most unhappy by describing in a low^ even 
voice, the procession that was always pass- 
ing at the bottom of his bed. He had a sick 
man's command of language. When he re- 
covered I suggested that he should write out 
the whole affair from beginning to end, know- 



10 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

ing that ink might assist him to ease his mind. 
When little boys have learned a new bad 
word they are never happy till they have 
chalked it up on a door. And this also is 
Literature. 

He was in a high fever while he was writ- 
ing, and the blood-and-thunder Magazine 
diction he adopted did not calm him. Two 
months afterwards he was reported fit for 
duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was 
urgently needed to help an undermanned 
Commission stagger through a deficit, he pre- 
ferred to die ; vowing at the last that he was 
hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he 
died, and this is his version of the affair, 
dated 1885 :— 

My doctor tells me that I need rest and 
change of air. It is not improbable that I 
shall get both ere long — rest that neither the 
red-coated messenger nor the midday gun 
can break, and change of air far beyond that 
which any homeward-bound steamer can give 
me. In the meantime I am resolved to stay 
where I am ; and, in flat defiance of my 
doctor's orders, to take all the world into my 
confidence. You shall learn for yourselves 
the precise nature of my malady ; and shall, 
too, judge for yourselves whether any man 
born of woman on this weary earth was ever 
so tormented as I. 

Speaking now as a condemned criminal 
might speak ere the drop-bolts are drawn, my 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw ii 

story, wild and hideously improbable as it 
may appear, demands at least attention. 
That it will ever receive credence I utterly 
disbelieve. Two months ago I should have 
scouted as mad or drunk the man who had 
dared tell me the like. Two months ago I 
was the happiest man in India. To-day, from 
Peshawar to the sea, there is no one more 
wretched. My doctor and I are the only two 
who know this. His explanation is, that my 
brain, digestion, and eyesight are all slightly 
affected ; giving rise to my frequent and persist- 
ent " delusions. " Delusions, indeed ! I call 
him a fool; but he attends me still with the 
same unwearied smile, the same bland pro- 
fessional manner, the same neatly-trimmed 
red whiskers, till I begin to suspect that I am 
an ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid. But you 
shall judge for yourselves. 

Three years ago it was my fortune — my 
great misfortune — to sail from Gravesend to 
Bombay, on return from long leave, with one 
Agnes Keith-Wessington, wife of an officer on 
the Bombay side. It does not in the least 
concern you to know what manner of woman 
she was. Be content with the knowledge 
that, ere the voyage had ended, both she and 
I were desperately and unreasoningly in love 
with one another. Heaven knows that I can 
make the admission now without one particle 
of vanity. In matters of this sort there is al- 
ways one who gives and another who accepts. 
From the first day of our ill-omened attach- 



12 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

ment, I was conscious that Agnes's passion 
was a stronger, a more dominant, and — if I 
may use the expression — a purer sentiment 
than mine. Whether she recognized the fact 
then, I do not know. Afterwards it was 
bitterly plain to both of us. 

Arrived at Bombay in the spring of the year, 
we went our respective ways, to meet no more 
for the next three or four months, when my 
leave and her love took us both to Simla. 
There we spent the season together ; and 
there my fire of straw burnt itself out to a piti- 
ful end with the closing year. I attempt no 
excuse. I make no apology. Mrs. Wessing- 
ton had given up much for my sake, and was 
prepared to give up all. From my own lips, 
in August, 1882, she learnt that I was sick 
of her presence, tired of her company, and 
weary of the sound of her voice. Ninety-nine 
women out of a hundred would have wearied 
of me as I wearied of them ; seventy-five of 
that number would have promptly avenged 
themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation 
with other men. Mrs. W^essington was the 
hundredth. On her neither my openly ex- 
pressed aversion nor the cutting brutalities 
with which I garnished our interviews had the 
least effect. 

" Jack, darling ! " was her one eternal 
cuckoo cry : " I'm sure it's all a mistake — a 
hideous mistake ; and we'll be good friends 
again some day. Please forgive me. Jack, 
dear." 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 13 

I was the offender, and I knew it. That 
knowledge transformed my pity into passive 
endurance, and, eventually, into blind hate 
— the same instinct, I suppose, which prompts 
a man to savagely stamp on the spider he has 
but half killed. And with this hate in my 
bosom the season of 1882 came to an end. 

Next year we met again at Simla — she with 
her monotonous face and timid attempts at 
reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in 
every fiber of my frame. Several times I 
could not avoid meeting her alone; and on 
each occasion her words were identically the 
same. Still the unreasoning wail that it was 
all a " mistake ; " and still the hope of event- 
ually " making friends." I might have seen, 
had I cared to look, that that hope only was 
keeping her alive. She grew more wan and 
thin month by month. You will agree with 
me, at least, that such conduct would have 
driven any one to despair. It was uncalled for ; 
childish ; unwomanly. I maintain that she 
was much to blame. And again, sometimes, 
in the black, fever-stricken night watches, 
I have begun to think that I might have been 
a little kinder to her. But that really is a 
" delusion." I could not have continued pre- 
tending to love her when I didn't ; could I ? 
It would have been unfair to us both. 

Last year we met again — on the same terms 
as before. The same weary appeals, and the 
same curt answers from my lips. At least I 
would make her see how wholly wrong and 



14 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

hopeless were her attempts at resuming the 
old relationship. As the season wore on, we 
fell apart — that is to say, she found it difficult 
to meet me, for I had other and more absorb- 
ing interests to attend to. When I think it 
over quietly in my sick-room, the season of 
1884 seems a confused nightmare wherein 
light and shade were fantastically intermingled 
— my courtship of little Kitty Mannering ; my 
hopes, doubts, and fears ; our long rides to- 
gether ; my trembling avowal of attachment ; 
her reply ; and now and again a vision of a 
white face flitting by in the 'rickshaw with the 
black and white liveries I once watched for 
so earnestly ; the wave of Mrs. Wessington's 
gloved hand ; and, when she met me alone, 
which was but seldom, the irksome monotony 
of her appeal. I loved Kitty Mannering; 
honestly, heartily loved her, and with my love 
for her grew my hatred for Agnes. In August, 
Kitty and I were engaged. The next day I 
met those accursed " magpie " jhampaiiies at 
the back of Jakko, and, moved by some pass- 
ing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell Mrs. 
Wessington everything. She knew it already. 

" So I hear you're engaged. Jack dear." 
Then, without a moment's pause : — " I'm sure 
it's all a mistake — a hideous mistake. We 
shall be as good friends some day, Jack, as 
we ever were." 

My answer might have made even a man 
wince. It cut the dying woman before me like 
the blow of a whip. 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 15 

" Please forgive me, Jack ; I didn't mean 
to make you angry ; but it's true, it's true ! " 

And Mrs. Wessington broke down com- 
pletely. I turned away and left her to finish 
her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a 
moment or two, that I had been an unutterably 
mean hound. I looked back^ and saw that 
she had turned her 'rickshaw with the idea, I 
suppose, of overtaking me. 

The scene and its surroundings were photo- 
graphed on my memory. The rain-swept sky 
(we were at the end of the wet weather), the 
sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the 
black powder-riven cliffs formed a gloomy 
background against which the black and 
white liveries of i\\Qj'hampanies, the yellow- 
paneled 'rickshaw and Mrs. Wessington's 
down-bowed golden head stood out clearly. 
She was holding her handkerchief in her left 
hand and was leaning back exhausted against 
the 'rickshaw cushions. I turned my horse 
up a by-path near the Sanjowlie Reservoir and 
literally ran away. Once I fancied I heard a 
faint call of '' Jack ! " This may have been 
imagination. I never stopped to verify it. 
Ten minutes later I came across Kitty on 
horseback ; and, in the delight of a long ride 
with her, forgot all about the interview. 

A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and 
the inexpressible burden of her existence was 
removed from my life. I went Plainsward 
perfectly happy. Before three months were 
over I had forgotten all about her, except that 



1 6 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

at times the discover}^ of some of her old 
letters reminded me unpleasantly of our b}'- 
gone relationship. By January I had disin- 
terred what was left of our correspondence 
from among my scattered belongings and had 
burnt it. At the beginning of April of this 
year, 1885, I was at Simla — semi-deserted 
Simla — once more, and was deep in lover's 
talks and walks with Kitty. It was decided 
that we should be married at the end of June, 
You will understand, therefore, that, loving 
Kitty as I did, I am not saying too much 
when I pronounce myself to have been, at 
that time, the happiest man in India. 

Fourteen delightful days passed almost 
before I noticed their flight. Then, aroused 
to the sense of what was proper among mor- 
tals circumstanced as we were, I pointed out 
to Kitty that an engagement ring was the out- 
ward and visible sign of her dignity as an en- 
gaged girl ; and that she must forthwith come 
to Hamilton's to be measured for one. Up 
to that moment, I give you my word, we had 
completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To 
Hamilton's we accordingly went on the 15th 
of April, 1885. Remember that — whatever 
my doctor may say to the contrary — I was 
then in perfect health, enjoying a well-bal- 
anced mind and an absolutely tranquil spirit. 
Kitty and I entered Hamilton's shop together, 
and there, regardless of the order of affairs, 
I measured Kitty for the ring in the presence 
of the amused assistant. The ring was a sap- 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 17 

phire with two diamonds. We then rode out 
down the slope that leads to the Combermere 
Bridge and Peliti's shop. 

While my Waler was cautiously feeling his 
way over the loose shale, and Kitty was laugh- 
ing and chattering at my side — while all Simla 
that is to say as much of it as had then come 
from the Plains, was grouped round the Read- 
ing-room and Peliti's veranda, — I was aware 
that some one, apparently at a vast distance, 
was calling me by my Christian name. It 
struck me that I had heard the voice before, but 
when and where I could not at once deter- 
mine. In the short space it took to cover the 
road between the path from Hamilton's shop 
and the first plank of the Combermere Bridge 
I had thought over half a dozen people who 
might have committed such a solecism, and 
had eventually decided that it must have been 
some singing in my ears. Immediately op- 
posite Peliti's shop my eye was arrested by 
the sight of four jhainpaiiies in " magpie " 
livery, pulling a yellows-paneled, cheap, bazar 
'rickshaw. In a moment my mind flew back 
to the previous season and Mrs. Wessington 
with a sense of irritation and disgust. Was 
it not enough that the woman was dead and 
done with, without her black and white ser- 
vitors reappearing to spoil the day's happi- 
ness ? Whoever employed them now I thought 
I would call upon, and ask as a personal favor 
to change her jhampaiiies livery. I would 
hire the men myself, and, if necessary, buy 
2 



1 8 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

their coats from off their backs. It is impos- 
sible to say here what a flood of undesirable 
memories their presence evoked. 

" Kitty," I cried, " there are poor Mrs.- 
Wessington'sy/^^/^^/^/^/Vj- turned up again! I 
wonder who has them now ? " 

Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly 
last season, and had always been interested 
in the sickly woman. 

"What? Where?" she asked. "I can't 
see them anywhere." 

Even as she spoke, her horse, swerving 
from a laden mule, threw himself directly in 
front of the advancing 'rickshaw. I had 
scarcely time to utter a word of warning, when, 
to my unutterable horror, horse and rider 
passed through men and carriage as if they 
had been thin air. 

" What's the matter ? " cried Kitty ; " what 
made you call out so foolishly, Jack ? If I 
am engaged I don't want all creation to know 
about it. There was lots of space between 
the mule and the veranda ; and, if you think 
I can't ride There ! " 

Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty 
little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the 
direction of the Band-stand ; fully expecting, 
as she herself afterwards told me, that I should 
follow her. What was the matter ? Nothing 
indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or 
that Simla was haunted with devils. I reined 
in my impatient cob, and turned round. The 
'rickshaw had turned too, and now stood im- 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 19 

mediately facing me, near the left railing of 
the Combermere Bridge. 

"Jack! Jack, darling!" There was no 
mistake about the words this time : they rang 
through my brain as if they had been shouted 
in my ear. " It's some hideous mistake, I'm 
sure. Please forgive me, Jack, and let's be 
friends again." 

The 'rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and 
inside, as I hope and pray daily for the death 
I dread by night, sat Mrs. Keith-VVessington, 
handkerchief in hand, and golden head bowed 
on her breast. 

How long I stared motionless I do not 
know. Finally, I was aroused by my syce 
taking the Waler's bridle and asking whether 
I was ill. From the horrible to the common- 
place is but a step. I tumbled off my horse 
and dashed, half fainting, into Peliti's for a 
glass of cherry-brandy. There two or three 
couples were gathered round the coffee-tables 
discussing the gossip of the day. Their 
trivialities were more comforting to me just 
then than the consolations of religion could 
have been. I plunged into the midst of the 
conversation at once ; chatted, laughed, and 
jested with a face (when I caught a glimpse 
of it in a mirror) as white and drawn as that 
of a corpse. Three or four men noticed my 
condition ; and, evidently setting it down to 
the results of over-many pegs, charitably en- 
deavored to draw me apart from the rest of 
the loungers. But I refused to be led away. 



20 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

I wanted the company of my kind — as a child 
rushes into the midst of the dinner-party after 
a fright in the dark. I must have talked for 
about ten minutes or so, though it seemed an 
eternity to me, when I heard Kitty's clear 
voice outside inquiring for me. In another 
minute she had entered the shop, prepared 
to roundly upbraid me for failing so signally 
in my duties. Something in my face stopped 
her. 

" Why, Jack," she cried, " what have you 
been doing t What has happened } Are you 
ill ? " Thus driven into a direct lie, I said 
that the sun had been a little too much for 
me. It was close upon five o'clock of a cloudy 
April afternoon, and the sun had been hidden 
all day. I saw my mistake as soon as the 
words were out of my mouth ; attempted to 
recover it ; blundered hopelessly and followed 
Kitty in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the 
smiles of my acquaintances. I made some 
excuse (I have forgotten what) on the score of 
my feeling faint ; and cantered away to my 
hotel, leaving Kitty to finish the ride by her- 
self. 

In my room I sat down and tried calmly to 
reason out the matter. Here was I, Theo- 
bald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal 
Civilian in the year of grace 1885, presumably 
sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from 
my sweetheart's side by the apparition of a 
woman who had been dead and buried eight 
months ago. These were facts that I could 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 21 

not blink. Nothing was further from my 
thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington 
when Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop. 
Nothing was more utterly commonplace than 
the stretch of wall opposite Peliti's. It was 
broad daylight. The road was full of people ; 
and yet here, look you, in defiance of every 
law of probability, in direct outrage of Nature's 
ordinance, there had appeared to me a face 
from the grave. 

Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rick- 
shaw : so that my first hope that some woman 
marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired 
the carriage and the coolies with their old 
livery was lost. Again and again I went round 
this treadmill of thought ; and again and 
again gave up baffled and in despair. The 
voice was as inexplicable as the apparition. 
I had originally some wild notion of confid- 
ing it all to Kitty ; of begging her to marry 
me at once ; and in her arms defying the 
ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw. " After 
all," I argued, " the presence of the 'rickshaw 
is in itself enough to prove the existence of 
a spectral illusion. One may see ghosts of 
men and women, but surely never of coolies 
and carriages. The whole thing is absurd. 
Fancy the ghost of a hillman ! " 

Next morning I sent a penitent note to 
Kitty, imploring her to overlook my strange 
conduct of the previous afternoon. My 
Divinity was still very wroth, and a personal 
apology was necessary. I explained, with a 



22 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

fluency born of night-long pondering over a 
falsehood, that I had been attacked with a sud- 
den palpitation of the heart — the result of in- 
digestion. This eminently practical solution 
had its effect ; and Kitty and I rode out that 
afternoon with the shadow of my first lie 
dividing us. 

Nothing would please her save a canter 
round Jakko. With my nerves still unstrung 
from the previous night. I feebly protested 
against the notion, suggesting Observatory 
Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge road — anything 
rather than the Jakko round. Kitty was 
angry and a little hurt : so I yielded from fear 
of provoking further misunderstanding, and we 
set out together towards Chota Simla. We 
walked a greater part of the way, and accord- 
ing to our custom, cantered from a mile or so 
below the convent to a stretch of level road 
by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched 
horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat 
quicker and quicker as we neared the crest of 
the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs. 
Wessington all the afternoon ; and every inch 
of the Jakko road bore witness to our old-time 
walks and talks. The bowlders were full of 
it ; the pines sang it aloud overhead ; the 
rain-fed torrents giggled and chuckled unseen 
over the shameful story; and the wind in my 
ears chanted the iniquity aloud. 

As a fitting climax, in the middle of the level 
men call the Ladies' Mile the Horror was 
No other 'rickshaw was in sight 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 23 

— only the four black and white jhauipanics^ 
the yellow-paneled carriage, and the golden 
head of the woman within — all apparently 
just as I had left them eight months and one 
fortnight ago ! For an instant I fancied that 
Kitty 7nust see what I saw — we were so mar- 
velously sympathetic in all things. Her next 
words undeceived me — " Not a soul in sight ! 
Come along, Jack, and I'll race you to the 
Reservoir buildings ! " Her wiry little Arab 
was off like a bird, my Waler following close 
behind, and in this order we dashed under the 
cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty 
yards of the 'rickshaw. I pulled my Waler and 
fell back a little. The 'rickshaw was directly 
in the middle of the road; and once more the 
Arab passed through it, my horse following. 
" Jack ! Jack dear ! Please forgive me, " rang 
with a wail in my ears, and, after an interval: 
— "It's all a mistake, a hideous mistake ! " 

I spurred my horse like a man possessed. 
When I turned my head at the Reservoir 
works, the black and white liveries were still 
waiting — patiently waiting — under the gray 
hillside, and the wind brought me a mocking 
echo of the words I had just heard. Kitty 
bantered me a good deal on my silence through- 
out the remainder of the ride. I had been 
talking up till then wildly and at random. 
To save my life I could not speak afterwards 
naturally, and from Sanjowlie to the Church 
wisely held my tongue. 

I was to dine with the Mannerings that 



24 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

night, and had barely time to canter home to 
dress. On the road to Elysium Hill I over- 
heard two men talking together in the dusk. 
— "It's a curious thing," said one, "how 
completely all trace of it disappeared. You 
know my wife w^as insanely fond of the woman 
(never could see anything in her myself), and 
wanted me to pick up her old 'rickshaw and 
coolies if they were to be got for love or money. 
Morbid sort of fancy I call it ; but I've got lo 
do what the Memsahib tells me. Would you 
believe that the man she hired it from tells me 
that all four of the men — they were brothers 
— died of cholera on the way to Hardwar, 
poor devils ; and the 'rickshaw has been 
broken up by the man himself. 'Told me he 
never used a dead Me?nsahib' s 'rickshaw. 
'Spoilt his luck. Queeij- notion, wasn't it.'' 
Fancy poor little Mrs. Wessington spoiling 
any one's luck except her own ! " I laughed 
aloud at this point ; and my laugh jarred on 
me as I uttered it. So there tvefe ghosts of 
'rickshaws after all, and ghostly employments 
in the other world ! How much did Mrs. 
Wessington give her men ? What were their 
hours ? Where did they go } 

And for visible answer to my last question 
I saw the infernal Thing blocking my path in 
the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by 
short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I 
laughed aloud a second time, and checked my 
laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was 
going mad. Mad to a certain extent I must 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 25 

have been, for I recollect that I reined in 
my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and 
politely wished Mrs. Wessington " Good even- 
ing." Her answer was one I knew only too 
well. I listened to the end ; and replied that 
I had heard it all before, but should be de- 
lighted if she had anything further to say. 
Some malignant devil stronger than I must 
have entered into me that evening, for I have a 
dim recollection of talking the commonplaces 
of the day for five minutes to the Thing in 
front of me. 

" Mad as a hatter, poor devil — or drunk. 
Max, try and get him to come home." 

Surely that was not Mrs. Wessington's 
voice ! The two men had overheard me speak- 
ing to the empty air, and had returned to look 
after me. They were very kind and consider- 
ate, and from their words evidently gathered 
that I was extremely drunk. I thanked them 
confusedly and cantered away to my hotel, 
there changed, and arrived at the Mannerings' 
ten minutes late. I pleaded the darkness of 
the night as an excuse ; was rebuked by Kitty 
for my unlover-like tardiness ; and sat down. 

The conversation had already became gen- 
eral ; and under cover of it, I was addressing 
some tender small talk to my sweetheart, 
when I was aware that at the further end of 
the table a short red-whiskered man was de- 
scribing, with much broidery, his encounter 
with a mad unknown that evening. 

A few sentences convinced me that he was 



26 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

repeating the incident of half an hour ago. 
In the middle of the story he looked round 
for applause, as professional story-tellers 
do, caught my eye, and straightway collapsed. 
There was a moment's awkward silence, and 
the red-whiskered man muttered something to 
the effect that he had " forgotten the rest," 
thereby sacrificing a reputation as a good 
story-teller which he had built up for six sea- 
sons past. I blessed him from the bottom of 
my heart, and — went on with my fish. 

In the fulness of time that dinner came to 
an end ; and with genuine regret I tore my- 
self away from Kitty — as certain as I was of 
my own existence that It would be waiting for 
me outside the door. The red-whiskered man, 
who had been introduced to me as Dr. Heath- 
erlegh of Simla, volunteered to bear me com- 
pany as far as our roads lay together. I ac- 
cepted his offer with gratitude. 

My instinct had not deceived me. It lay in 
readiness in the Mall, and, in what seemed 
devilish mockery of our ways, v/ith a lighted 
head-lamp. The red-whiskered man went to 
the point at once, in a manner that showed he 
had been thinking over it all dinner time. 

" I say, Pansay, what the deuce was the 
matter with you this evening on the Elysium 
road ? " The suddenness of the question 
wrenched an answer from me before I was 
aware. 

" That ! " said I, pointing to It. 

" That, may be either D. T. or Eyes for 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 27 

aught I know. Now you don't liquor. I saw 
as much at dinner, so it can't be D. T. 
There's nothing whatever where you're point- 
ing, though you're sweating and trembling 
with fright like a scared pony. Therefore, I 
conclude that it's Eyes. And I ought to 
understand all about them. Come along 
home with me. I'm on the Blessington lower 
road." 

To my intense delight the 'rickshaw, instead 
of waiting for us, kept about twenty yards 
ahead — and this, too, whether we walked, 
trotted, or cantered. In the course of that 
long night ride I had told my companion al- 
most as much as I have told you here. 

" Well, you've spoilt one of the best tales 
I've ever laid tongue to," said he, "but I'll 
forgive you for the sake of what you've gone 
through. Now come home and do what I 
tell you ; and when I've cured you, young 
man, let this be a lesson to you to steer clear 
of women and indigestible food till the day 
of your death." 

The ^rickshaw kept steady in front ; and my 
red-whiskered friend seemed to derive great 
pleasure from my account of its exact where- 
abouts. 

" Eyes, Pansay — all Eyes, Brain, and Stom- 
ach. And the greatest of these three is 
Stomach. You've too much conceited Brain, 
too little Stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy 
Eyes. Get your Stomach straight and the 
rest follows. And all that's French for a 



28 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

liver pill. I'll take sole medical charge of 
you from this hour ! for you're too interesting 
a phenomenon to be passed over." 

By this time we were deep in the shadow of 
the Blessington lower road and the 'rickshaw 
came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, over- 
hanging shale cliff. Instinctively I halted 
too, giving my reason, Heatherlegh rapped out 
an oath. 

' ' Now, if you think I'm going to spend a 
cold night on the hillside for the sake of 
a Stomach r//?;z-Brain-r/^;;z-Eye illusion . . . 
Lord, ha' mercy ! What's that .? " 

There was a muffled report, a blinding 
smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, 
the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards 
of the cliff-side — pines, undergrowth, and all 
— slid down into the road below, completely 
blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed 
and tottered for a moment like drunken giants 
in the gloom, and then fell prone among their 
fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two 
horses stood motionless and sweating with 
fear. As soon as the rattle of falling earth 
and stone had subsided, my companion mut- 
tered : — " Man if we'd gone forward we should 
have been ten feet deep in our graves by 
now. ' There are more things in heaven and 
earth ' . . . Come home, Pansay, and thank 
God. I want a peg badly." 

We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, 
and I arrived at Dr. Heatherlegh's house 
shortly after midnight. 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 29 

His attempts towards my cure commenced 
almost immediately, and for a week I never 
left his side. Many a time in the course 
of that week did I bless the good-fortune 
which had thrown me in contact with Simla's 
best and kindest doctor. Day by day my 
spirits grew lighter and more equable. Day 
by day, too, I became more and more in- 
clined to fall in with Heatherlegh's " spectral 
illusion " theory, implicating eyes, brain, and 
stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a 
slight sprain caused by a fall from my horse 
kept me indoors for a few days ; and that I 
should be recovered before she had time to 
regret my absence. 

Heatherlegh's treatment was simple to a de- 
gree. It consisted of liver pills, cold-water 
baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk 
or at early dawn — for, as he sagely observed: 
— " A man with a sprained ankle doesn't 
walk a dozen miles a day, and your young 
woman might be wondering if she saw 
you." 

At the end of the week, after much examina- 
tion of pupil and pulse, and strict injunctions 
as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dis- 
missed me as brusquely as he had taken charge 
of me. Here is his parting benediction : — 
" Man, I certify to your mental cure, and that's 
as much as to say I've cured most of your 
bodily ailments. Now, get your traps out of 
this as soon as you can ; and be off to make 
love to Miss Kitty." 



30 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

I was endeavoring to express my thanks for 
his kindness. He cut me short. 

" Don't think I did this because I like you. 
I gather that you've behaved like a blackguard 
all through. But, all the same, you're a phe- 
nomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you 
are a blackguard. No ! " — checking me a 
second time — " not a rupee, please. Go out 
and see if you can find the eyes-brain-and- 
stomach business again. I'll give you a lakh 
for each time you see it." 

Half an hour later I wasin the Mannerings' 
drawing-room with Kitty — drunk, with the in- 
toxication of present happiness and the fore- 
knowledge that I should never more be trou- 
bled with Its hideous presence. Strong in the 
sense of my new-found security, I proposed a 
ride at once ; and, by preference, a canter 
round Jakko. 

Never had I felt so well, so overladen with 
vitality and mere animal spirits, as I did on 
the afternoon of the 30th of April. Kitty was 
delighted at the change in my appearance, and 
complimented me on it in her delightfully frank 
and outspoken manner. We left the Manner- 
ings' house together, laughing and talking, and 
cantered along the Chota Simla road as of 
old. 

I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reser- 
voir and there make my assurance doubly sure. 
The horses did their best, but seemed all too 
slow to my impatient mind. Kitty was aston- 
ished at my boisterousness. " Why, Jack ! " 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 31 

she cried at last, " you are behaving like a 
child. What are you doing?" 

We were just below the Convent, and from 
sheer wantonness I was making my Waler 
plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled 
it with the loop of my riding-whip. 

''Doing?" I answered: "nothing, dear. 
That's just it. If you'd been doing nothing 
for a week except lie up, you'd be as riotous 
as I. 

*' ' Singing and murmuring in your feastf ul mirth, 
Joying to feel yourself alive ; 
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible Earth, 
Lord of the senses five.' " 

My quotation was hardly out of my lips be- 
fore we had rounded the corner above the 
Convent ; and a few yards further on could 
see across to Sanjowlie. In the center of the 
level road stood the black and white liveries, 
the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw, and Mrs. Keith- 
Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my 
eyes, and, I believe, must have said something. 
The next thing I knew was that I was lying 
face downward on the road, with Kitty kneel- 
ing above me in tears. 

"Has It gone, child?" I gasped. Kitty 
only wept more bitterly. 

" Has what gone. Jack dear ? What does it 
all mean ? There must be a mistake some- 
where. Jack. A hideous mistake." Her last 
words brought me to my feet — mad — raving 
for the time being. 

" Yes, there is a mistake somewhere," I re- 



32 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

peated, *' a hideous mistake. Come and look 
at It." 

I have an indistinct idea that I dragged 
Kitty by the wrist along the road up to where 
It stood, and implored her for pity's sake to 
speak to It ; to tell It that we were betrothed ; 
that neither Death nor Hell could break the 
tie between us ; and Kitty only knows how 
much more to the same effect. Now and 
again I appealed passionately to the Terror 
in the 'rickshaw to bear witness to all I had 
said, and to release me from a torture that 
was killing me. As I talked I suppose I must 
have told Kitty of my old relations with Mrs. 
Wessington, for I saw her listen intently with 
white face and blazing eyes. 

" Thank you, Mr. Pansay," she said, " that's 
quite enough. Syce ghora lao.^^ 

The syces, impassive as Orientals always 
are, had come up with the recaptured horses ; 
and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught 
hold of the bridle, entreating her to hear me 
out and forgive. My answer was the cut of 
her riding-whip across my face from mouth to 
eye, and a word or two of farewell that even 
now I cannot write down. So I judged, and 
judged rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I 
staggered back to the side of the 'rickshaw. 
My face was cut and bleeding, and the blow 
of the riding-whip had raised a livid blue 
weal on it. I had no self-respect. Just 
then, Heatherlegh, who must have been fol- 
lowing Kitty and me at a distance, cantered up. 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 33 

" Doctor," I said, pointing to my face, 
" here's Miss Mannering's signature to my 
order of dismissal and . . . I'll thank you for 
that lakh as soon as convenient." 

Heatherlegh's face, even in my abject mis- 
ery, moved me to laughter. 

" I'll stake my professional reputation " — 
he began. 

" Don't be a fool," I whispered. *' I've lost 
my life's happiness and you'd better take me 
home." 

" As I spoke the 'rickshaw was gone. Then 
I lost all knowledge of what was passing. 
The crest of Jakko seemed to heave and 
roll like the crest of a cloud and fall in upon 
me. 

Seven days later (on the 7th of May, that 
is to say) I was aware that I was lying in 
Heatherlegh's room as weak as a little child. 
Heatherlegh was watching me intently from 
behmd the papers on his writing-table. His 
first words were not encouraging ; but I was 
too far spent to be much moved by them. 

" Here's Miss Kitty has sent back your 
letters. You correspond a good deal, you 
young people. Here's a packet that looks 
like a ring, and a cheerful sort of a note from 
Mannering Papa, which I've taken the liberty 
of readmg and burning. The old gentleman's 
not pleased with you." 

" And Kitty ? " I asked dully. 

" Rather more drawn than her father, from 
what she says. By the same token you must 
3 



34 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

have been letting out any number of queer 
reminiscences just before I met you. ' Says 
that a man who would have behaved to a 
woman as you did to Mrs. Wessington ought 
to kill himself out of sheer pity for his kind. 
She is a hot-headed little virago, your mash. 
'Will have it too that you were suffering from 
D. T. when that row on the Jakko road 
turned up. 'Says she'll die before she ever 
speaks to you again." 

I groaned and turned over on the other side. 

" Now you've got your choice, my friend. 
This engagement has to be broken off ; and 
the Mannerings don't want to be too hard on 
you. Was it broken through D. T. or 
epileptic fits ? Sorry I can't offer you a better 
exchange unless you'd prefer hereditary in- 
sanity. Say the word and I'll tell 'em it's 
fits. All Simla knows about that scene on 
the Ladies' Mile. Come ! I'll give you five 
minutes to think over it. " 

During those five minutes I believe that I 
explored thoroughly the lowest circles of the 
Inferno which it is permitted man to tread on 
earth. And at the same time I myself was 
watching myself faltering through the dark 
labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair. 
I wondered, as Heatherlegh in his chair might 
have wondered, which dreadful alternative I 
should adopt. Presently I heard myself an- 
swering in a voice that I hardly recognized, — 

"They're confoundedly particular about 
morality in these parts. Give 'em fits. Heath- 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 35 

erlegh, and my love. Now let me sleep a bit 
longer." 

Then my two selves joined, and it was only 
I (half crazed, devil-driven I) that tossed in 
my bed, tracing step by step the history of the 
pasfmonth. 

" But I am in Simla," I kept repeating to 
myself. "I, Jack Pansay, am in Simla, and 
there are no ghosts here. It's unreasonable 
of that woman to pretend there are. Why 
couldn't Agnes have left me alone ? I never 
did her any harm. It might just as well have 
been me as Agnes. Only I'd never have 
come back on purpose to kill her. Why can't 
I be left alone — left alone and happy t " 

It was high noon when I first awoke : and 
the sun was low in the sky before I slept — 
slept as the tortured criminal sleeps on his 
rack, too worn to feel further pain. 

Next day I could not leave my bed. Heath- 
erlegh told me in the morning that he had 
received an answer from Mr. Mannering, and 
that, thanks to his (Heatherlegh's) friendly 
offices, the story of my affliction had traveled 
through the length and breadth of Simla, 
where I was on all sides much pitied. 

" And that's rather more than you deserve," 
he concluded pleasantly, " though the Lord 
knows you've been going through a pretty 
severe mill. Never mind ; we'll cure you yet, 
you perverse phenomenon." 

I declined firmly to be cured. "You've 
been much too good to me already, old man," 



36 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

said I ; *' but I don't think I need trouble you 
further." 

In my heart I knew that nothing Heath- 
erlegh could do would lighten the burden that 
had been laid upon me. 

With that knowledge came also a sense of 
hopeless, impotent rebellion against the un- 
reasonableness of it all. There were scores 
of men no better than I whose punishments 
had at least been reserved, for another world ; 
and I felt that it was bitterly, cruelly unfair 
that I alone should have been singled out for 
so hideous a fate. This mood would in time 
give place to another where it seemed that the 
^rickshaw and I were the only realities in a 
world of shadows ; that Kitty was a ghost ; 
that Mannering, Heatherlegh, and all the 
other men and women I knew were all ghosts ; 
and the great, gray hills themselves but vain 
shadows devised to torture me. From mood 
to mood I tossed backwards and forwards for 
seven weary days ; my body growing daily 
stronger and stronger, until the bedroom look- 
ing-glass told me that I had returned to every 
day life, and was as other men once more. 
Curiously enough my face showed no signs of 
the struggle I had gone through. It was pale 
indeed, but as expressionless and common- 
place as ever. I had expected some per- 
manent alteration — visible evidence of the 
disease that was eating me away. I found 
nothing. 

On the 15th of May I left Heatherlegh's 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 37 

house at eleven o'clock in the morning ; and 
the instinct of the bachelor drove me to the 
Club. There I found that every man knew 
my story as told by Heatherlegh, and was, in 
clumsy fashion, abnormally kind and attentive. 
Nevertheless I recognized that for the rest of 
my natural life I should be among but not of 
my fellows ; and I envied very bitterly indeed 
the laughing coolies on the Mall below. I 
lunched at the Club, and at four o'clock wan- 
dered aimlessly down the Mall in the vague 
hope of meeting Kitty. Close to the Band- 
stand the black and white liveries joined me ; 
and I heard Mrs. Wessington's old appeal at 
my side. I had been expecting this ever since 
I came out ; and was only surprised at her 
delay. The phantom 'rickshaw and I went 
side by side along the Chota Simla road in 
silence. Close to the bazar, Kitty and a man 
on horseback overtook and passed us. For 
any sign she gave I might have been a dog in 
the road. She did not even pay me the com- 
pliment of quickening her pace ; though the 
rainy afternoon had served for an excuse. 

So Kitty and her companion, and I and my 
ghostly Light-o'-Love, crept round Jakko in 
couples. The road was streaming with water ; 
the pines dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks 
below, and the air was full of fine, driving 
rain. Two or three times I found myself say- 
ing to myself almost aloud : — " I'm Jack 
Pansay on leave at Simla — at Simla ! Every- 
day, ordinary Simla. I mustn't forget that — 



38 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

I mustn't forget that." Then I would try to 
recollect some of the gossip I had heard at 
the Club ; the prices of So-and-So's horses — 
anything, in fact, that related to the work-a- 
day Anglo-Indian world I knew so well. I 
even repeated the multiplication-table rapidly 
to myself, to make quite sure that I was not 
taking leave of my senses. It gave me much 
comfort ; and must have prevented my hear- 
ing Mrs. Wessington for a time. 

Once more I wearily climbed the Convent 
slope and entered the level road. Here Kitty 
and the man started off at a canter, and I was 
left alone with Mrs. Wessington. "Agnes," 
said I, " will you put back your hood and tell 
me what it all means ? " The hood dropped 
noiselessly, and I was face to face with my 
dead and buried mistress. She was wearing 
the dress in which I had last seen her alive ; 
carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right 
hand ; and the same card-case in her left. (A 
woman eight months dead with a card-case ?) 
I had to pin myself down to the multiplication- 
table, and to set both hands on the stone 
parapet of the road, to assure myself that that 
at least was real. 

" Agnes," I repeated, " for pity's sake tell 
me what it all means." Mrs. Wessington 
leant forward with that odd, quick turn of the 
head I used to know so well, and spoke. 

If my story had not already so madly over- 
leaped the bounds of all human belief I should 
apologize to you now. As I know that no 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 39 

one — no, not even Kitty, for whom it is 
written as some sort of justification of my con- 
duct — will believe me, I will go on. Mrs. 
Wessington spoke and I walked with her 
from the Sanjowlie road to the turning below 
the Commander-in-chief's house as I might 
walk by the side of any living woman's 'rick- 
shaw, deep in conversation. The second and 
most tormenting of my moods of sickness had 
suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the 
Prince in Tennyson's poem, " I seemed to 
move amid a world of ghosts." There had 
been a garden-party at the Commander-in- 
chief's, and we two joined the crowd of home- 
ward-bound folk. As I saw them then it 
seemed that they were the shadows — impal- 
pable fantastic shadows — that divided for 
Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. 
What we said during the course of that weird 
interview I cannot — indeed, I dare not — tell. 
Heatherlegh's comment would have been a 
short laugh and a remark that I had been 
" mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera." 
It was a ghastly and yet in some indefinable 
way a marvelously dear experience. Could it 
be possible, I wondered, that I was in this 
life to woo a second time the woman I had 
killed by my own neglect and cruelty ? 

I met Kitty on the homeward road — a 
shadow among shadows. 

If I were to describe all the incidents of the 
next fortnight in their order, my story would 
never come to an end ; and your patience 



40 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

would be exhausted. Morning after morning 
and evening after evening the ghostly 'rick- 
shaw and I used to wander through Simla 
together. Wherever I went there the four 
black and white liveries followed me and bore 
me company to and from my hotel. At the 
Theater I found them amid the crowd of 
yeWmgj'hampajiks; outside the Club veranda, 
after a long evening of whist ; at the Birthday 
Ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance ; 
and in broad daylight when I went calling. 
Save that it cast no shadow, the 'rickshaw 
was in every respect as real to look upon as 
one of wood and iron. More than once, in- 
deed, I have had to check myself from warn- 
ing some hard-riding friend against cantering 
over it. More than once I have walked down 
the Mall deep in conversation with Mrs. Wes- 
sington to the unspeakable amazement of the 
passers-by. 

Before I had been out and about a week I 
learned that the " fit " theory had been dis- 
carded in favor of insanity. However, I 
made no change in my mode of life, I called, 
rode, and dined out as freely as ever. I had 
a passion for the society of my kind which I 
had never felt before ; I hungered to be 
among the realities of life ; and at the same 
time I felt vaguely unhappy when I had been 
separated too long from my ghostly compan- 
ion. It would be almost impossilDle to de- 
scribe my varying moods from the 15th of May 
up to to-day. 



The Phantom 'Rickshaw 41 

The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by 
turns with horror, blind fear, a dim sort of 
pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not 
leave Simla ; and I knew that my stay there 
was killing me. I knew, moreover, that it was 
my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. 
My only anxiety was to get the penance over 
as quietly as might be. Alternately I hun- 
gered for a sight of Kitty and watched her out- 
rageous flirtations with my successor — to 
speak more accurately, my successors — with 
amused interest. She was as much out of my 
life as I was out of hers. By day I wandered 
with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By 
night I implored Heaven to let me return to 
the world as I used to know it. Above all 
these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, 
numbing wonder that the Seen and the Un- 
seen should mingle so strangely on this earth 
to hound one poor soul to its grave. 



August 27. — Heatherlegh has been indefat- 
igable in his attendance on me ; and only 
yesterday told me that I ought to send in an 
application for sick leave. An application to 
escape the company of a phantom ! A request 
that the Government would graciously permit 
me to get rid of five ghosts and an airy 'rick- 
shaw by going to England ! Heatherlegh's 
proposition moved me almost to hysterical 
laughter. I told him that I should await the 
end quietly at Simla ; and I am sure that the 



42 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

end is not far off. Believe me that I dread 
its advent more than any word can say ; and 
I torture myself nightly with a thousand specu- 
lations as to the manner of my death. 

Shall I die in my bed decently and as an 
English gentleman should die ; or, in one last 
walk on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched 
from me to take its place forever and ever by 
the side of that ghastly phantasm ? Shall I re- 
turn to my old lost allegiance in the next 
world, or shall I meet Agnes, loathing her 
and bound to her side through all eternity ? 
Shall we two hover over the scene of our lives 
till the end of Time } As the dr.y of my 
death draws nearer, the intense horror that all 
living flesh feels towards escaped spirits from 
beyond the grave grows more and more 
powerful. It is an awful thing to go down 
quick among the dead with scarcely one-half 
of your life completed. It is a thousand times 
more awful to wait as I do in your midst, for 
I know not what unimaginable terror. Pity 
me, at least on the score of my " delusion," 
for I know you will never believe what I have 
written here. Yet as surely as ever a man 
was done to death by the Powers of Darkness 
I am that man. 

In justice, too, pity her. For as surely as 
ever woman was killed by man, I killed Mrs. 
Wessington. And the last portion of my pun- 
ishment is even now upon me. 



MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY. 



As I came through the Desert thus it was — 
As I came through the Desert. 

The City of Dreadful Night. 

• 

Somewhere in the Other World, where there 
are books and pictures and plays and shop- 
windows to look at, and thousands of men 
who spend their lives in building up all four, 
lives a gentleman who writes real stories about 
the real insides of people ; and his name is Mr. 
Walter Besant. But he will insist upon treat- 
ing his ghosts — he has published half a work- 
shopful of them — with levity. He makes his 
ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some cases, 
flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. You may 
treat anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular 
Paper, with levity ; but you must behave rev- 
erently towards a ghost, and particularly an 
Indian one. 

There are, in this land, ghosts who take the 
form of fat, cold, pobby corpses, and hide in 
trees near the roadside till a traveler passes. 
Then they drop upon his neck and remain. 
There are also terrible ghosts of women who 
have died in child-bed. These wander along 
the pathways at dusk, or hide in the crops 
near a village, and call seductively. But to 
43 



44 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

answer their call is death in this world and the 
next. Their feet are turned backwards that 
all sober men may recognize them. There are 
ghosts of little children who have been thrown 
into wells. These haunt well-curbs and the 
fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or 
catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken 
up and carried. These and the corpse-ghosts, 
however, are only vernacular articles and do 
not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has yet 
been authentically reported to have frightened 
an Englishman ; but many English ghosts have 
scared the life out of both white and black. 

Nearly every other Station owns a ghost. 
There are said to be two at Simla, not count- 
ing the woman who blows the bellows at Syree 
dak-bungalow on the Old Road ; Mussoorie 
has a house haunted of a very lively Thing ; a 
White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman 
round a house in Lahore ; Dalhousie says that 
one of her houses " repeats " on autumn even- 
ings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and- 
precipice accident ; Murree has a merry ghost, 
and, now that she has been swept by cholera, 
will have room for a sorrowful one ; there are 
Officers Quarters, in Mian Mir whose doors 
open without reason, and whose furniture is 
guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June 
but with the weight of Invisibles who come 
to lounge in the chairs ; Peshawar possesses 
houses that none will willingly rent ; and there 
is something — not fever — wrong with a big 
bungalow in Allahabad. The older Provinces 



My Own True Ghost Story 45 

simply bristle with haunted houses, and march 
phantom armies along their main thorough- 
fares. 

Some of the dak-bungalows on the Grand 
Trunk Road have handy little cemeteries in 
their compound — witnesses to the " changes 
and chances of this mortal life " in the days 
when men drove from Calcutta to the North- 
west. These bungalows are objectionable 
places to put up in. They are generally very 
old, always dirty, while the khaiisamah is as 
ancient as the bungalow. He either chatters 
senilely, or falls into the long trances of age. 
In both moods he is useless. If you get angry 
with him, he refers to some Sahib dead and 
buried these thirty years, and says that when 
he was in that Sahib's service not a khansamah 
in the Province could touch him. Then he jab- 
bers and mows and trembles and fidgets 
among the dishes and you repent of your irri- 
tation. 

In these dak-bungalows, ghosts are most 
likely to be found, and when found, they 
should be made a note of. Not long ago it 
was my business to live in dak-bungalows. 
I never inhabited the same house for three 
nights running, and grew to be learned in the 
breed. I lived in Government-built ones with 
red brick walls and rail ceilings, an inventory 
of the furniture posted in every room, and 
an excited snake at the threshold to give wel- 
come. I lived in "converted" ones — old 
houses officiating as dak-bungalows — where 



46 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't 
even a fowl for dinner. I lived in second- 
hand palaces where the wind blew through 
open-work marble tracery just as uncomfort- 
ably as through a broken pane. I lived in dak- 
bungalows where the last entry in the visitors' 
book was fifteen months old, and where they 
slashed off the curry-kid's head with a sword. 
It was my good luck to meet all sorts of men, 
from sober traveling missionaries and deserters 
flying from British Regiments, to drunken 
loafers who threw whisky bottles at all who 
passed; and my still greater good fortune just 
to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair 
proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here 
acted itself in dak-bungalows, I wondered that 
I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would vol- 
untarily hang about a dak-bungalow would be 
mad of course ; but so many men have died 
mad in dak-bungalows that there must be a 
fair percentage of lunatic ghosts. 

In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts 
rather, for there were two of them. Up till 
that hour I had sympathized with Mr. Besant's 
method of handling them, as shown in " The 
Straiige Case of Mr. Lucraft and other Stories.'^ 
I am now in the opposition. 

We will call the bungalow Katmal dak- 
bungalow. But that was the smallest part of 
the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has 
no right to sleep in dak-bungalows. He 
should marry. Katmal dak-bungalow was 
old and rotten and unrepaired. The floor 



My Own True Ghost Story 47 

was of worn brick, the walls were filthy, and 
the windows were nearly black with grime. 
It stood on a by-path largely used by native 
Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from 
Finance to Forests ; but real Sahibs were rare. 
The k/iajisamah, who was nearly bent double 
with old age, said so. 

When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided 
rain on the face of the land, accompanied by 
a restless wind, and every gust made a noise 
like the rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy- 
palms outside. The khansamah completely 
lost his head on my arrival. He had served 
a Sahib once. Did I know that Sahib ? He 
gave me the name of a well-known man who 
has been buried for more than a quarter of a 
century, and showed me an ancient daguerreo- 
type of that man in his prehistoric youth. I 
had seen a steel engraving of him at the head 
of a double volume of Memoirs a month be- 
fore, and I felt ancient beyond telling. 

The day shut in and the kha?isatnah went 
to get me food. He did not go through the 
pretense of calling it " khana " — man's vic- 
tuals. He said " 7-atub^^^ and that means, 
among other things, " grub " — dog's rations. 
There was no insult in his choice of the term. 
He had forgotten the other word, I suppose. 

While he was cutting up the dead bodies of 
animals, I settled myself down, after exploring 
the dak-bungalow. There w^ere three rooms, 
beside my own, which was a corner kennel, 
each giving into the other through dingy white 



48 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

doors fastened with long iron bars. Tiie 
bungalow was a very solid one, but the parti- 
tion-walls of the rooms were almost jerry- 
built in their flimsiness. Every step or bang 
of a trunk echoed from my room down the 
other three, and every footfall came back 
tremulously from the far walls. For this 
reason I shut the door. There were no lamps 
— only candles in long glass shades. An oil 
wick was set in the bath-room. 

For bleak, unadulterated misery that dak- 
bungalow was the worst of the many that I had 
ever set foot in. There was no fireplace, and 
the windows would not open ; so a brazier of 
charcoal would have been useless. The rain 
and the wind splashed and gurgled and 
moaned round the house, and the toddy-palms 
rattled and roared. Half a dozen jackals 
went through the compound singing, and a 
hyena stood afar off and mocked them. A 
hyena would convince a Sadducee of the 
Resurrection of the Dead — the worst sort of 
Dead. Then came the 7-ahib — a curious meal, 
half native and half English in composition — 
with the old khansamah babbling behind my 
chair about dead and gone English people, 
and the wind-blown candles playing shadow- 
bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-cur- 
tains. 

It was just the sort of dinner and evening 
to make a man think of every single one of 
his past sins, and of all the others that he in- 
tended to commit if he lived. 



My Own True Ghost Story 49 

Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not 
easy. The lamp in the bath-room threw the 
most absurd shadows into the room, and the 
wind was beginning to talk nonsense. 

Just when the reasons were drowsy with 
bloodsucking I heard the regular — "Let-us- 
take-and-heave-him-over " grunt of doolie- 
bearers in the compound. First one doolie 
came in, then a second, and then a third. I 
heard the doolies dumped on the ground, and 
the shutter in front of my door shook. " That's 
some one trying to come in," I said. But no 
one spoke, and I persuaded myself that it was 
the gusty wind. The shutter of the room 
next to mine was attacked, flung back, and 
the inner door opened. ''That's some Sub- 
Deputy Assistant," I said, "and he has 
brought his friends with him. Now they'll 
talk and spit and smoke for an hour." 

But there were no voices and no footsteps. 
No one was putting his luggage into the next 
room. The door shut, and I thanked Provi- 
dence that I was to be left in peace. But I 
was curious to know where the doolies had 
gone. I got out of bed and looked into the 
darkness. There was never a sign of a doolie. 
Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, 
in the next room, the sound that no man in his 
senses can possibly mistake — the whir of a 
billiard ball down the length of the slates 
when the striker is stringing for break. No 
other sound is like it. A minute afterwards 
there was another whir, and I got into bed. I 
4 



50 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

was not frightened — indeed I was not. I was 
very curious to know what had become of the 
doolies. I jumped into bed for that reason. 

Next minute I heard the double click of a 
cannon and my hair sat up. It is a mistake 
to say that hair stands up. The skin of the 
head tightens and you can feel a faint, prickly 
bristling all over the scalp. That is the hair 
sitting up. 

There was a whir and a click, and both 
sounds could only have been made by one 
thing — a billiard ball. I argued the matter 
out at great length with myself ; and the more 
I argued the less probable it seemed that one 
bed, one table, and two chairs — all the furni- 
ture of the room next to mine — could so ex- 
actly duplicate the sounds of a game of bil- 
liards. After another cannon, a three-cushion 
one to judge by the whir, I argued no more. 
I had found my ghost and would have given 
worlds to have escaped from that dak-bun- 
galow. I listened, and with each listen the 
game grew clearer. There was whir on whir 
and click on click. Sometimes there was a 
double click and a whir and another click. 
Beyond any sort of doubt, people were play- 
ing billiards in the next room. And the next 
room was not big enough to hold a billiard 
table ! 

Between the pauses of the wind I heard the 
game go forward — stroke after stroke. I tried 
to believe that I could not hear voices ; but 
that attempt was a failure. 



My Own True Ghost Story 51 

Do you know what fear is ? Not ordinary 
fear of insult, injury or death, but abject, 
quivering dread of something that you can- 
not see — fear that dries the inside of the mouth 
and half of the throat — fear that makes you 
sweat on the palms of the hands, and gulp in 
order to keep the uvula at work ? This is a 
fine Fear — a great cowardice, and must be felt 
to be appreciated. The very improbability of 
billiards in a dak-bungalow proved the reality 
of the thing. No man — drunk or sober — could 
imagine a game at billiards, or invent the spit- 
ting crack of a *• screw-cannon." 

A severe course of dak-bungalows has this 
disadvantage — it breeds infinite credulity. If 
a man said to a confirmed dak-bungalow- 
haunter : — " There is a corpse in the next room, 
and there's a mad girl in the next but one, 
and the woman and man on that camel have 
just eloped from a place sixty miles away," 
the hearer would not disbelieve because he 
would know that nothing is too wild, grotesque, 
or horrible to happen in a dak-bungalow. 

This credulity, unfortunately, extends to 
ghosts. A rational person fresh from his own 
house would have turned on his side and slept. 
I did not. So surely as I was given up as a 
bad carcass by the scores of things in the bed 
because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, 
so surely did I hear every stroke of a long 
game at billiards played in the echoing room 
behind the iron-barred door. My dominant 
fear was that the players might want a marker. 



52 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

It was an absurd fear ; because creatures 
who could play in the dark would be above 
such superfluities. I only know that that 
was my terror ; and it was real. 

After a long long while, the game stopped, 
and the door banged. I slept because I was 
dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred 
to have kept awake. Not for everything in 
Asia would I have dropped the door-bar and 
peered into the dark of the next room. 

When the morning came, I considered that 
I had done well and wisely and inquired for 
the means of departure. 

" By the way, khansamah^^^ I said, " what 
were those three doolies doing in my com- 
pound in the night ?" 

" There were no doolies," said the khansa- 
inah. 

I went into the next room and the daylight 
streamed through the open door. I was im- 
mensely brave. I would, at that hour, have 
played Black Pool with the owner of the big 
Black Pool down below. 

" Has this place always been a dak-bunga- 
low ? " I asked. 

" No," said the khansamah. " Ten or twenty 
years ago, I have forgotten how long, it was a 
billiard-room." 

" A how much ? " 

" A billiard-room for the Sahibs who built 
the Railway. I was khansa77iah then in the 
big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived, 
and I used to come across with brandy-j^//;'^^. 



My Own True Ghost Story 55 

These three rooms were all one, and they held 
a big table on which the Sahibs played every 
evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, 
and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to 
Kabul." 

" Do you remember anything about the 
Sahibs ? " 

" It is long ago, but I remember that one 
Sahib, a fat man and always angry, was play- 
ing here one night, and he said to me : — ' Man- 
gal Khan, brandy pani do,^ and I filled the 
glass, and he bent over the table to strike, 
and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the 
table, and his spectacles came off, and when 
we — the Sahibs and I myself — ran to lift him 
he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha, 
he was a strong Sahib ! But he is dead and I, 
old Mangal Khan, am still living, by your 
favor." 

That was more than enough ! I had my 
ghost — a first-hand, authenticated article. I 
would write to the Society for Psychical Re- 
search — I would paralyze the Empire with the 
news ! But I would, first of all, put eighty 
miles of assessed crop-land between myself 
and that dak-bungalow before nightfall. The 
Society might send their regular agent to in- 
vestigate later on. 

I went into my own room and prepared to 
pack after noting down the facts of .the case. 
As I smoked I heard the game begin again, — 
with a miss in balk this time, for the whir 
was a short one. 



54 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

The door was open and I could see into the 
room. Click — click ! That was a cannon. I 
entered the room without fear, for there was 
sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. 
The unseen game was going on at a tremen- 
dous rate. And well it might, when a restless 
little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy 
ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window- 
sash was making fifty breaks off the window- 
bolt as it shook in the breeze ! 

Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard 
balls ! Impossible to mistake the whir of a 
ball over the slate ! But I was to be excused. 
Even when I shut my enlightened eyes the 
sound was marvelously like that of a fast 
game. 

Entered angrily the faithful partner of my 
sorrows, Kadir Baksh. 

"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste ! 
No wonder the Presence was disturbed and 
is speckled. Three sets of doolie-bearers 
came to the bungalow late last night when I 
was sleeping outside, and said that it was 
their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for 
the English people ! What honor has the 
khansamah ? They tried to enter, but I told 
them to go. No wonder, if these Oorias have 
been here, that the Presence is sorely spotted. 
It is shame, and the work of a dirty man." 

Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken 
from each gang two annas for rent in advance, 
and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten 
them with the big green umbrella whose use 



My Own True Ghost Story 55 

I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh 
has no notions of morality. 

There was an interview with the kJiansamah, 
but as he promptly lost his head, wrath gave 
place to pity, and pity led to a long conversa- 
tion, in the course of which he put the fat 
Engineer-Sahib's tragic death in three separ- 
ate stations — two of them fifty miles away. 
The third shift was to Calcutta, and there 
the Sahib died while driving a dog-cart. 

If I had encouraged him the khansamah 
would have wandered all through Bengal with 
his corpse. 

I did not go away as soon as I intended. 
I stayed for the night, while the wind and the 
rat and the sash and the window-bolt played 
a ding-dong " hundred and fifty up. " Then 
the wind ran out and the billiards stopped, 
and I felt that I had ruined my one genuine, 
hall-market ghost story. 

Had I only stopped at the proper time, I 
could have made anything out of it. 

That was the bitterest thought of all ! 



THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE 
JUKES 



Alive or dead — there is no other way. — Native 
Proverb. 

There is, as the conjurers say, no decep- 
tion about tliis tale. Jukes by accident 
stumbled upon a village that is well known 
to exist, though he is the only Englishman 
who has been there. A somewhat similar 
institution used to flourish on the outskirts of 
Calcutta, and there is a story that if you go 
into the heart of Bikanir, which is in the 
heart of the Great Indian Desert, you shall 
come across not a village, but a town where 
the Dead who did not die but may not live 
have established their headquarters. And, 
since it is perfectly true that in the same 
Desert is a wonderful city where all the rich 
money-lenders retreat after they have made 
their fortunes (fortunes so vast that the owners 
cannot trust even the strong hand of the Gov- 
ernment to protect them, but take refuge in 
the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous 
C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful girls 
and decorate their palaces with gold and 
ivory and INIinton tiles and mother-o'-pearl, I 
do not see why Jukes's tale should not be 

56 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 57 

true. He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for 
plans and distances and things of that kind, 
and he certainly would not take the trouble 
to invent imaginary traps. He could earn 
more by doing his legitimate work. He 
never varies the tale in the telling, and grows 
very hot and indignant when he thinks of the 
disrespectful treatment he received. He 
wrote this quite straightforwardly at first, but 
he has since touched it up in places and in- 
troduced Moral Reflections, thus : — 

In the beginning it all arose from a slight 
attack of fever. My work necessitated my 
being in camp for some months between 
Pakpattan and Mubarakpur — a desolate sandy 
stretch of country as every one who has had 
the misfortune to go there may know. My 
coolies were neither more nor less exasperat- 
ing than other gangs, and my work demanded 
sufficient attention to keep me from moping, 
had I been inclined to so unmanly a weak- 
ness. 

On the 23d December, 1884, I felt a little 
feverish. There was a full moon at the time, 
and, in consequence, every dog near my tent 
was baying it. The brutes assembled in 
twos and threes and drove me frantic. A few 
days previously I had shot one loud-mouthed 
singer and suspended his carcass in tei'rorem 
about fifty yards from my tent-door. But 
his friends fell upon, fought for, and ulti- 
mately devoured the body : and, as it seemed 



58 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

to me, sang their hymns of thanksgiving 
afterwards with renewed energy. 

The light-headedness which accompanies 
fever acts differently on different men. My 
irritation gave way, after a short time, to a 
fixed determination to slaughter one huge 
black and white beast who had been foremost 
in song and first in flight throughout the 
evening. Thanks to a shaking hand and a 
giddy head I had already missed him twice 
with both barrels of my shotgun, when it 
struck me that my best plan would be to ride 
him down in the open and finish him off with 
a hog-spear. This, of course, was merely the 
semi-delirious notion of a fever patient ; but 
I remember that it struck me at the time as 
being eminently practical and feasible. 

I therefore ordered my groom to saddle 
Pornic and bring him round quietly to the 
rear of my tent. When the pony was ready, 
I stood at his head prepared to mount and 
dash out as soon as the dog should again lift 
up his voice. Pornic, by the wa}'-, had not 
been out of his pickets for a couple of days ; 
the night air was crisp and chilly ; and I was 
armed with a specially long and sharp pair of 
persuaders with which I had been rousing a 
sluggish cob that afternoon. You will easily 
believe, then, that when he was let go he went 
quickly. In one moment, for the brute bolted 
as straight as a die, the tent was left far be- 
hind, and we were flying over the smooth 
sandy soil at racing speed. In another we 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 59 

had passed the wretched dog, and I had 
almost forgotten why it was that I had taken 
horse and hog-spear. 

The delirium of fever and the excitement of 
rapid motion through the air must have taken 
away the remnant of my senses. I have a 
faint recollection of standing upright in my 
stirrups, and of brandishing my hog-spear at 
the great white Moon that looked down so 
calmly on my mad gallop ; and of shouting 
challenges to the camel-thorn bushes as they 
whizzed passed. Once or twice, I believe, I 
swayed forward on Pornic's neck, and literally 
hung on by my spurs — as the marks next 
morning showed. 

The wretched beast went forward like a 
thing possessed, over what seemed to be a lim- 
itless expanse of moonlit sand. Next, I re- 
member, the ground rose suddenly in front of 
us, and as we topped the ascent I saw the 
waters of the Sutlej shining like a silver bar 
below. The Pornic blundered heavily on his 
nose, and we rolled together down some un- 
seen slope. 

I must have lost consciousness, for when I 
recovered I was lying on my stomach in a 
heap of soft white sand, and the dawn was 
beginning to break dimly over the edge of the 
slope down which I had fallen. As the light 
grew stronger I saw that I was at the bottom 
of a horseshoe-shaped crater of sand, opening 
on one side directly on to the shoals of the 
Sutlej. My fever had altogether left me, and 



6o The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

with the exception of a slight dizziness in the 
head, I felt no bad effects from the fall over 
night. 

Pornic, who was standing a few yards away, 
was naturally a good deal exhausted, but had 
not hurt himself in the least. His saddle, a 
favorite polo one, was much knocked about, 
and had been twisted under his belly. It 
took me some time to put him to rights, and 
in the meantime I had ample opportunities 
of observing the spot into which I had so 
foolishly dropped. 

At the risk of being considered tedious, I 
must describe it at length ; inasmuch as an 
accurate mental picture of its peculiarities will 
be of material assistance in enabling the 
reader to understand what follows. 

Imagine then, as I have said before, a 
horseshoe-shaped crater of sand with steeply 
graded sand walls about thirty-five feet high. 
(The slope, I fancy, must have been about 
^5°). This crater enclosed a level piece of 
ground about fifty yards long by thirty at its 
broadest part, with a rude well in the center. 
Round the bottom of a crater, about three 
feet from the level of the ground proper, ran 
a series of eighty-three semi-circular, ovoid, 
square, and multilateral holes, all about three 
feet at the mouth. Each hole on inspection 
showed that it was carefully shored internally 
with driftwood and bamboos, and over the 
mouth a wooden drip-board projected, like 
the peak of a jockey's cap, for two feet. No 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 6i 

sign of life was visible in these tunnels, but a 
most sickening stench pervaded the entire 
amphitheater — a stench fouler than any which 
my wanderings in Indian villages have in- 
troduced me to. 

Having remounted Pornic, who was as anx- 
ious as 1 to get back to camp, I rode round 
the base of the horseshoe to find some place 
whence an exit would be practicable. The 
inhabitants, whoever they might be, had not 
thought fit to put in an appearance, so I was 
left to my own devices. My first attempt to 
"rush" Pornic up the steep sand-banks 
showed me that I had fallen into a trap ex- 
actly on the same model as that which the 
ant-lion sets for its prey. At each step the 
shifting sand poured down from above in tons, 
and rattled on the drip-boards of the holes like 
small shot. A couple of ineffectual charges 
sent us both rolling down to the bottom, half 
choked with the torrents of sand ; and I was 
constrained to turn my attention to the river- 
bank. 

Here everything seemed easy enough. The 
sand hills ran down to the river edge, it is 
true, but there were plenty of shoals and shal- 
lows across which I could gallop Pornic, and 
find my way back to terra firma by turning 
sharply to the right or the left. As I led Por- 
nic over the sands I was startled by the faint 
pop of a rifle across the river ; and at the same 
moment a bullet dropped with a sharp " whit'^ 
close to Pornic's head. 



62 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

There was no mistaking the nature of the 
missile — a regulation Martini-Henry" picket." 
About five hundred yards away a country-boat 
was anchored in midstream ; and a jet of 
smoke drifting away from its bows in the still 
morning air showed me whence the delicate 
attention had come. Was ever a respectable 
gentleman in such an i?npasse? The treach- 
erous sand slope allowed no escape from a spot 
which I had visited most involuntarily, and 
a promenade on the river frontage was the 
signal for a bombardment from some insane 
native in a boat. I'm afraid that 1 lost my 
temper very much indeed. 

Another bullet reminded me that I had better 
save my breath to cool my porridge; and I 
retreated hastily up the sands and back to the 
horseshoe, where I saw that the noise of the 
rifle had drawn sixty-five human beings from 
the badger-holes which I had up till that point 
supposed to be untenanted. I found myself 
in the midst of a crowd of spectators — about 
forty men, twenty women, and one child who 
could not have been more than five years old. 
They were all scantily clothed in that salmon- 
colored cloth which one associates with Hindu 
mendicants, and, at first sight, gave m.e the 
impression of a band of loathsome fakirs. 
The filth and repulsiveness of the assembly 
w'ere beyond all description, and I shuddered 
to think what their life in the badger-holes 
must be. 

Even in these days, when local self-govern- 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 63 

ment has destroyed the greater part of a na- 
tive's respect for a Sahib, I have been accus- 
tomed to a certain amount of civility from my 
inferiors, and on approaching the crowd natu- 
rally expected that there would be some recog- 
nition of my presence. As a matter of fact 
there was ; but it was by no means what I had 
looked for. 

The ragged crew actually laughed at me — 
such laughter I hope I may never hear again. 
They cackled, yelled, whistled, and howled as 
I walked into their midst ; some of them liter- 
ally throwing themselves down on the ground 
in convulsions of unholy mirth. In a moment 
I had let go Pornic's head, and, irritated be- 
yond expression at the morning^s adventure, 
commenced cuffing those nearest to me with 
all the force I could. The wretches dropped 
under my blows like nine-pins, and the laughter 
gave place to wails for mercy ; while those yet 
untouched clasped me round the knees, im- 
ploring me in all sorts of uncouth tongues to 
spare them. 

In the tumult, and just when I was feeling 
very much ashamed of myself for having thus 
easily given way to my temper, a thin, high 
voice murmured in English from behind my 
shoulder :—" Sahib ! Sahib! Do you not 
know me ? Sahib, it is Gunga Dass, the tele- 
graph-master." 

I spun round quickly and faced the speaker. 

Gunga Dass (I have, of course, no hesita- 
tion in mentioning the man's real name) I had 



64 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

known four years before as a Deccanee Brah- 
min lent by the Punjab Government to one of 
the Khalsia States. He was in charge of a 
branch telegraph-office there, and when I had 
last met him was a jovial, full-stomached, 
portly Government servant with a marvelous 
capacity for making bad puns in English — a 
peculiarity which made me remember him long 
after I had forgotten his services to me in his 
official capacity. It is seldom that a Hindu 
makes English puns. 

Now, however, the man was changed beyond 
all recognition. Caste-mark, stomach, slate- 
colored continuations, and unctuous speech 
were all gone. I looked at a withered skele- 
ton, turbanless and almost naked, with long 
matted hair and deep-set codfish-eyes. But 
for a crescent-shaped scar on the left cheek — 
the result of an accident for which I was re- 
sponsible — I should never have known him. 
But it was indubitably Gunga Dass, and — for 
this I was thankful — an English-speaking na- 
tive who might at least tell me the meaning of 
all that I had gone through that day. 

The crowd retreated to some distance as I 
turned towards the miserable figure, and or- 
dered him to show me some method of escap- 
ing from the crater. He held a freshly plucked 
crow in his hand, and in reply to my question 
climbed slowly on a platform of sand which 
ran in front of the holes, and commenced 
lighting a fire there in silence. Dried bents, 
sand-poppies, and driftwood burn quickly ; 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 65 

and I derived much consolation from the fact 
that he lit them with an ordinary sulphur- 
match. When they were in a bright glow, and 
the crow was neatly spitted in front thereof, 
Gunga Dass began without a word of pre- 
amble : — 

" There are only two kinds of men, Sar. 
The alive and the dead. When you are dead 
you are dead, but when you are alive you live." 
(Here the crow demanded his attention for an 
instant as it twirled before the fire in danger 
of being burnt to a cinder.) "If you die at 
home and do not die when you come to the 
ghat to be burnt you come here." 

The nature of the reeking village was made 
plain now, and all that I had known or read 
of the grotesque and the horrible paled before 
the fact just communicated by the ex-Brahmin. 
Sixteen years ago, when I first landed in Bom- 
bay, I had been told by a wandering Armenian 
of the existence, somewhere in India, of a 
place to which such Hindus as had the mis- 
fortune to recover from trance or catalepsy 
were conveyed and kept, and I recollect laugh- 
ing heartily at what I was then pleased to con- 
sider a traveler's tale. Sitting at the bottom 
of the sand-trap, the memory of Watson's 
Hotel, with its swinging punkahs, white-robed 
attendants, and the sallowed faced Armenian, 
rose up in my mind as vividly as a photograph, 
and I burst into a loud fit of laughter. The 
contrast was too absurd ! 

Gunga Dass, as he bent over the unclean 
5 



66 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

bird, watched me curiously. Hindus seldom 
laugh, and his surroundings were not such as 
to move Gunga Dass to any undue excess of 
hilarity. He removed the crow solemnly from 
the wooden spit and as solemnly devoured it. 
Then he continued his story, which I give in 
his own words : — 

" In epidemics of the cholera you are car- 
ried to be burnt almost before you are dead. 
When you come to the riverside the cold air, 
perhaps, makes you alive, and then, if you are 
only little alive, mud is put on your nose and 
mouth and you die conclusively. If you are 
rather more alive, more mud is put; but if you 
are too lively they let you go and take you away. 
I was too lively, and made protestation with 
anger against the indignities that they endeav- 
ored to press upon me. In those days I was 
Brahmin and proud man. Now I am dead 
man and eat "—here he eyed the well-gnawed 
breast bone with the first sign of emotion 
that I had seen in him since we met — " crows, 
and other things. They took me from my 
sheets when they saw that I was too lively and 
gave me medicines for one week, and I sur- 
vived successfully. Then they sent me by 
rail from my place to Okara Station with a. 
man to take care of me ; and at Okara Station 
we met two other men, and they conducted 
we three on camels, in the night, from Okara 
Station to this place, and they propelled me 
from the top to the bottom, and the other two 
succeeded, and I have been here ever since, two 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 67 

and a half years. Once I was Brahmin and 
proud man, and now I eat crows." . 

" There is no way of getting out ? " 

" None of what kind at all. When I first 
came I made experiments frequently and all 
the others also, but we have always suc- 
cumbed to the sand which is precipitated 
upon our heads." 

" But surely," I broke in at this point, 
" the river-front is open, and it is worth 
while dodging the bullets ; while at night " 

I had already matured a rough plan of 
escape which a natural instinct of selfishness 
forbade me sharing with Gunga Dass. He, 
however, divined my unspoken thought al- 
most as soon as it was formed ; and, to my 
intense astonishment, gave vent to a long 
low chuckle of derision — the laughter, be it 
understood, of a superior or at least of an 
equal. "You will not " — he had dropped the 
Sir completely after his opening sentence — 
" make any escape that way. But you can 
try. I have tried. Once only." 

The sensation of nameless terror and abject 
fear which I had in vain attempted to strive 
against overmastered me completely. My 
long fast — it was now close upon ten o'clock, 
and I had eaten nothing since tiffin on the 
previous day — combined with the violent and 
unnatural agitation of the ride had exhausted 
me, and I verily believe that, for a few min- 
utes, I acted as one mad. I hurled myself 
against the pitiless sand-slope. I ran round 



68 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

the base of the crater, blaspheming and 
praying by turns. I crawled out among the 
sedges of the river-front, only to be driven 
back each time in an agony of nervous dread 
by the rifle-bullets which cut up the sand 
round me — for I dared not face the death 
of a mad dog among that hideous crowd — 
and finally fell, spent and raving, at the curb 
of the well. No one had taken the slightest 
notice of an exhibition which makes me blush 
hotly even when I think of it now. 

Two or three men trod on my panting 
body as they drew water, but they were evi- 
dently used to this sort of thing, and had no 
time to waste upon me. The situation was 
humiliating. Gunga Dass, indeed, when he 
had banked the embers of his fire with sand, 
was at some pains to throw half a cupful of 
fetid water over my head, an attention for 
which I could have fallen on my knees and 
thanked him, but he was laughing all the 
while in the same mirthless, wheezy key 
that greeted me on my first attempt to force 
the shoals. And so, in a semi-comatose 
condition, I lay till noon. Then, being only 
a man after all, I felt hungry, and intimated 
as much to Gunga Dass, whom I had begun 
to regard as my natural protector. Follow- 
ing the impulse of the outer world when 
dealing with natives, I put my hand into my 
pocket and drew out four annas. The ab- 
surdity of the gift struck me at once, and I 
was about to replace ^l^e money. 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 69 

Gunga Dass, however, was of a different 
opinion. "■ Give me the money," said he ; 
" all you have, or I will get help, and we 
will kill you ! " All this as if it were the most 
natural thing in the world ! 

A Briton's first impulse, I believe, is to 
guard the contents of his pockets ; but a 
moment's reflection convinced me of the fu- 
tility of differing with the one man who had 
it in his power to make me comfortable ; and 
with whose help it was possible that I might 
eventually escape from the crater. I gave 
him all the money in my possession, Rs. 9-8- 
5 — nine rupees eight annas and five pie — 
for I always keep small change as bakshish 
when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched 
the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged 
loin-cloth, his expression changing to some- 
thing diabolical as he looked round to assure 
himself that no one had observed us. 

'^ Now I will give you something to eat," 
said he. 

What pleasure the possession of my 
money could have afforded him I am unable 
to say ; but inasmuch as it did give him evi- 
dent delight I was not sorry that I had 
parted with it so readily, for I had no doubt 
that he would have had me killed if I had 
refused. One does not protest against the 
vagaries of a den of wild beasts ; and my 
companions w^ere lower than any beasts. 
While I devoured what Gunga Dass had 
provided, a coarse chapatti and a cupful 



70 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

of the foul well-water, the people showed 
not the faintest sign of curiosity — that 
curiosity which is so rampant, as a rule, in 
an Indian village. 

I could even fancy that they despised me. 
At all events they treated me with the most 
chilling indifference, and Gunga Dass was 
nearly as bad. I plied him with questions 
about the terrible village, and received ex- 
tremely unsatisfactory answers. So far as I 
could gather, it had been in existence from 
time immemorial — whence I concluded that 
it was at least a century old — and during that 
time no one had ever been known to escape 
from it. [I had to control myself here with 
both hands, lest the blind terror should lay 
hold of me a second time and drive me rav- 
ing round the crater.] Gunga Dass took a 
malicious pleasure in emphasizing this point 
and in watching me wince. Nothing that I 
could do would induce him to tell me who the 
mysterious " They " were. 

" It is so ordered," he would reply, " and 
I do not yet know any one who has disobeyed 
the orders." 

" Only wait till my servants find that I am 
missing," I retorted, " and I promise you that 
this place shall be cleared off the face of the 
earth, and I'll give you a lesson in civility, 
too, my friend." 

" Your servants would be torn in pieces 
before they came near this place ; and, be- 
sides, you are dead, my dear friend. It is 



Stran.^'e Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 71 

not your fault, of course, but none the less 
you are dead ^/^^ buried." 

At irregular intervals supplies of food, I 
was told, were dropped down from the land 
side into the amphitheater, and the inhabitants 
fought for them like wild beasts. When a 
man felt his death coming on he retreated to 
his lair and died there. The body was some- 
times dragged out of the hole and thrown on 
to the sand, or allowed to rot where it lay. 

The phrase " thrown on to the sand " caught 
my attention, and I asked Gunga Dass 
whether this sort of thing was not likely ta 
breed a pestilence. 

"That," said he, with another of his 
wheezy chuckles, " you may see for yourself 
subsequently. You will have much time to 
make observations." 

Whereat, to his great delight, I winced once 
more and hastily continued the conversation : 
— " And how do you live here from day ta 
day ? What do you do ? " The question 
elicited exactly the same answer as before — 
coupled with the information that " this place 
is like your European heaven ; there is 
neither marrying nor giving in marriage." 

Gunga Dass had been educated at a Mis- 
sion School, and, as he himself admitted, had 
he only changed his religion " like a wise 
man," might have avoided the living grave 
which Vv'as now his portion. But as long as 
I was with him 1 fancy he was happy. 

Here was a Sahib, a representative of the 



72 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

dominant race, helpless as a child and com- 
pletely at the mercy of his native neighbors. 
In a deliberate lazy way he set himself to 
torture me as a schoolboy would devote a 
rapturous half-hour to watching the agonies 
of an impaled beetle, or as a ferret in a blind 
burrow might glue himself comfortably to 
the neck of a rabbit. The burden of his con- 
versation was that there was no escape " of 
no kind whatever," and that I should stay 
here till I died and was " thrown on to the 
sand." If it were possible to forejudge the 
conversation of the Damned on the advent of 
a new soul in their abode, I should say that 
they would speak as Gunga Dass did to me 
throughout that long afternoon. I was power- 
less to protest or answer; all my energies 
being devoted to a struggle against the inex- 
plicable terror that threatened to overwhelm 
me again and again. I can compare the 
feeling to nothing except the struggles of a 
man against the overpowering nausea of the 
Channel passage — only my agony was of the 
spirit and infinitely more terrible. 

As the day wore on, the inhabitants began 
to appear in full strength to catch the rays of 
the afternoon sun, which were now sloping 
in at the mouth of the crater. They assem- 
bled in little knots, and talked among them- 
selves without even throwing a glance in my 
direction. About four o'clock, as far as I 
could judge, Gunga Dass rose and dived into 
his lair for a moment, emerging with a live 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 73 

crow in his hands. The wretched bird was 
in a most draggled and deplorable condition, 
but seemed to be in no way afraid of its 
master. Advancing cautiously to the river- 
front, Gunga Dass stepped from tussock to 
tussock until he had reached a smooth patch 
of sand directly in the line of the boat's fire. 
The occupants of the boat took no notice. 
Here he stopped, and with a couple of dexter- 
ous turns of the wrist, pegged the bird on its 
back with outstretched wings. As was only 
natural, the crow began to shriek at once and 
beat the air with its claws. In a few seconds 
the clamor had attracted the attention of a 
bevy of wild crows on a shoal a few hundred 
yards away, where they were discussing 
something that looked like a corpse. Half 
a dozen crows flew over at once to see what 
was going on, and also, as it proved, to 
attack the pinioned bird. Gunga Dass, who 
had lain down on a tussock, motioned to me 
to be quiet, though I fancy this was a need- 
less precaution. In a moment, and before I 
could see how it happened, a wild crow, who 
had grappled with the shrieking and helpless 
bird, was entangled in the latter's claws, swift- 
ly disengaged by Gunga Dass, and pegged 
down beside its companion in adversity. 
Curiosity, it seemed, overpowered the rest of 
the flock, and almost before Gunga Dass and 
I had time to withdraw to the tussock, two 
more captives were struggling in the upturned 
claws of the decoys. So the chase — if I can 



74 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

give it so dignified a name — continued until 
Gunga Dass had captured seven crows. Five 
of tliem he throttled at once, reserving two 
for further operations another day. I was a 
good deal impressed by this, to me, novel 
method of securing food, and complimented 
Gunga Dass on his skill. 

" It is nothing to do," said he. " To-mor- 
row you must do it for me. You are stronger 
than I am." 

This calm assumption of superiority upset 
me not a little, and I answered peremptorily : 
— " Indeed, you old ruffian ! What do you 
think I have given you money for } " 

" Very well," was the unmoved reply. 
" Perhaps not to-morrow, nor the day after, 
nor subsequently; but in the end, and for 
many years, you will catch crows and eat 
crows, and you will thank your European 
Gods that you have crows to catch and eat." 

I could have cheerfully strangled him for 
this ; but judged it best under the circum- 
stances to smother my resentment. An hour 
later I was eating one of the crows; and, as 
Gunga Dass had said, thanking my God that 
I had a crow to eat. Never as long as I live 
shall I forget that evening meal. The whole 
population were squatting on the hard sand 
platform opposite their dens, huddled over 
tiny fires of refuse and dried rushes. Death, 
having once laid his hand upon these men 
and forborne to strike, seemed to stand aloof 
from them now ; for most of our company 



strange Ride of Morrovvbie Jukes 75 

were old men, bent and worn and twisted 
with years, and women aged to all appear- 
ance as the Fates themselves. They sat to- 
gether in knots and talked — God only knows 
what they found to discuss — in low equable 
tones, curiously in contrast to the strident 
babble with which natives are accustomed to 
make day hideous. Now and then an access 
of that sudden fury which had possessed me 
in the morning would lay hold on a man or 
woman ; and with yells and imprecations the 
sufferer would attack the steep slope until, 
baffled and bleeding, he fell back on the plat- 
form incapable of moving a limb. The others 
would never even raise their eyes when this 
happened, as men too well aware of the fu- 
tility of their fellows' attempts and wearied 
with their useless repetition. I saw four such 
outbursts in the course of that evening. 

Gunga Dass took an eminently business- 
like view of my situation, and while we were 
dining — I can afford to laugh at the recollec- 
tion now, but it was painful enough at the 
time — propounded the terms on which he 
would consent to "do" for me. My nine 
rupees eight annas, he argued, at the rate of 
three annas a day, would provide me with 
food for fifty-one days, or about seven weeks ; 
that is to say, he would be willing to cater for 
me for that length of time. At the end of it 
I was to look after myself. For a further con- 
sideration — videlicet my boots — he would be 
willing to allow me to occupy the den next to his 



76 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

own, and would supply me with as much dried 
grass for bedding as he could spare. 

" Very well, Gunga Dass," I replied ; " to 
the first terms I cheerfully agree, but, as there 
is nothing on earth to prevent my killing you 
as you sit here and taking everything that 
you have" (I thought of the two invaluable 
crows at the time), " I flatly refuse to give you 
my boots and shall take whichever den I 
please." 

The stroke was a bold one, and I was glad 
when I saw that it had succeeded. Gunga 
Dass changed his tone immediately, and dis- 
avowed all intention of asking for my boots. 
At the time it did not strike me as at all 
strange that I, a Civil Engineer, a man of 
thirteen years' standing in the Service, and I 
trust, an average Englishman, should thus 
calmly threaten murder and violence against 
the man who had, for a consideration, it is true, 
taken me under his wdng. I had left the 
world, it seemed, for centuries. I was as cer- 
tain then as I am now of my own existence, 
that in the accursed settlement there w^as no 
law save that of the strongest ; that the living 
dead men had thrown behind them every canon 
of the world which had cast them out ; and 
that I had to depend for my own life on my 
strength and vigilance alone. The crew of 
the ill-fated Mignonette are the only men who 
would understand my frame of mind. "At 
present," I argued to myself, " I am strong and 
a match for six of these wretches. It is in> 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 77 

peratively necessary that I should, for my own 
sake, keep both heaUh and strength until the 
hour of my release comes — if it ever does." 

Fortified with these resolutions, I ate and 
drank as much as I could, and made Gunga 
Dass understand that I intended to be his 
master, and that the least sign of insubordi- 
nation on his part would be visited with the 
only punishment I had it in my power to in- 
flict — sudden and violent death. Shortly after 
this I went to bed. That is to say, Gunga 
Dass gave me a double armful of dried bents 
which I thrust down the mouth of the lair to 
the right of his, and followed myself, feet fore- 
most; the hole running about nine feet into 
the sand with a slight downward inclination, 
and being neatly shored with timbers. From 
my den, which faced the river-front, I was 
able to watch the waters of the Sutlej flowing 
past under the light of a young moon and 
composed myself to sleep as best I might. 

The horrors of that night I shall never for- 
get. My den was nearly as narrow as a coffin, 
and the sides had been worn smooth and 
greasy by the contact of innumerable naked 
bodies, added to which it smelled abominably. 
Sleep was altogetlier out of question to one in 
my excited frame of mind. As the night wore 
on, it seemed that the entire amphitheater was 
filled with legions of unclean devils that, troop- 
ing up from the shoals below, mocked the 
unfortunates in their lairs. 

Personally I am not of an imaginative tern- 



78 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

perament, — very few Engineers are, — but on 
that occasion I was as completely prostrated 
with nervous terror as any woman. After half 
an hour or so, however, I was able once more 
to calmly review my chances of escape. Any 
exit by the steep sand walls was, of course, 
impracticable. I had been thoroughly con- 
vinced of this some time before. It was 
possible, just possible, that I might, in the 
uncertain moonlight, safely run the gauntlet 
of the rifle shots. The place was so full of 
terror for me that I was prepared to undergo 
any risk in leaving it. Imagine my delight, 
then, when after creeping stealthily to the 
river-front I found that the infernal boat was 
not there. My freedom lay before me in the 
next few steps ! 

By walking out to the first shallow pool 
that lay at the foot of the projecting left horn 
of the horseshoe, I could wade across, turn 
the flank of the crater, and make my way in- 
land. Without a moment's hesitation I 
marched briskly past the tussocks where 
Gunga Dass had snared the crows, and out in 
the direction of the smooth white sand beyond. 
My first step from the tufts of dried grass 
showed me how utterly futile was any hope of 
escape; for, as I put my foot down, I felt an 
indescribable drawing, sucking motion of the 
sand below. Another moment and my leg 
was swallowed up nearly to the knee. In the 
moonlight the whole surface of the sand 
seemed to be shaken with devilish delight at 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 79 

my disappointment. I struggled clear, sweat- 
ing with terror and exertion, back to the tus- 
socks behind me and fell on my face. 

My only means of escape from the semi- 
circle was protected with a quicksand ! 

How long I lay I have not the faintest idea ; 
but I was roused at last by the malevolent 
chuckle of Gunga Dass at my ear. " I would 
advise you. Protector of the Poor" (the ruffian 
was speaking English) " to return to your 
house. It is unhealthy to lie down here. 
Moreover, when the boat returns, you will 
most certainly be rifled at. " He stood over 
me in the dim light of the dawn, chuckling 
and laughing to himself. Suppressing my first 
impulse to catch the man by the neck and 
throw him on to the quicksand, I rose sullenly 
and followed him to the platform below the 
burrows. 

Suddenly, and futilely as I thought while I 
spoke, I asked: — "Gunga Dass, what is the 
good of the boat if I can't get out ajiyhow ? " 
I recollect that even in my deepest trouble I 
had been speculating vaguely on the waste of 
ammunition in guarding an already well pro- 
tected foreshore. 

Gunga Dass laughed again and made 
answer : — " They have the boat only in day- 
time. It is for the reason that f/iere is a 7aay. 
I hope we shall have the pleasure of your com- 
pany for much longer time. It is a pleasant 
spot when you have been here some years and 
eaten roast crow long enough." 



8o The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

I staggered, numbed and helpless, towards 
the fetid burrow allotted to me, and fell asleep. 
An hour or so later I was awakened by a 
piercing scream — the shrill, high-pitched 
scream of a horse in pain. Those who have 
once heard that will never forget the sound. 
I found some little difficulty in scrambling out 
of the burrow. When I was in the open, I 
saw Pornic, my poor old Pornic, lying dead on 
the sandy soil. How they had killed him I 
cannot guess. Gunga Dass explained that 
horse was better than crow, and " greatest good 
of greatest number," is political maxim. 
We are now Republic, Mister Jukes, and 
you are entitled to a fair share of the beast. If 
you like, we will pass a vote of thanks. Shall 
I propose } " 

Yes, we were a Republic indeed ! A Re- 
public of wild beasts penned at the bottom of 
a pit, to eat and fight and sleep till we died. 
I attempted no protest of any kind, but sat 
down and stared at the hideous sight in front 
of me. In less time almost than it takes me 
to write this, Pornic's body was divided, in 
some unclean way or other; the men and 
women had dragged the fragments on to the 
platform and w^ere preparing their morning 
meal. Gunga Dass cooked mine. The al- 
most irresistible impulse to fly at the sand 
walls until I was wearied laid hold of me 
afresh, and I had to struggle against it with 
all my might. Gunga Dass was offensively 
jocular till I told him that if he addressed an- 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 8i 

other remark of any kind whatever to me I 
should strangle him where he sat. This si- 
lenced him till silence became insupportable, 
and I bade him say something. 

" You will live here till you die like the 
other Feringhi," he said coolly, watching me 
over the fragment of gristle that he was gnaw- 
ing. 

" What other Sahib, you swine ? Speak at 
once, and don't stop to tell me a lie." 

" He is over there," answered Gunga Dass, 
pointing to a burrow-mouth about four doors 
to the left of my own. " You can see for 
yourself. He died in the burrow as you will 
die, and I will die, and as all these men and 
women and the one child will also die." 

" For pity's sake tell me all you know about 
him. Who was he ? When did he come, 
and when did he die } " 

This appeal was a weak step on my part. 
Gunga Dass only leered and replied : — " I 
will not — unless you give me something 
first." 

Then I recollected where I was, and struck 
the man between the eyes, partially stunning 
him. He stepped down from the platform at 
once, and, cringing and fawning and weeping 
and attempting to embrace my feet, led me 
round to the burrow which he had indicated. 

" I know nothing whatever about the gentle- 
man. Your God be my witness that I do not. 
He was as anxious to escape as you were, 
and he was shot from the boat, though we 



S2 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

all did all things to prevent him from attempt- 
ing. He was shot here." Gunga Dass laid 
his hand on his lean stomach and bowed to 
the earth. 

" Well, and what then ? Go on ! " 

" And then — and then, Your Honor, we 
carried him in to his house and gave him 
water, and put wet cloths on the wound, and 
he laid down in his house and gave up the 
ghost. " 

" In how long ? In how long } " 

" About half an hour, after he received his 
wound. I call Vishn to witness," yelled the 
wretched man, "that I did everything for 
him. Everything which was possible, that 
I did ! " 

He threw himself down on the ground and 
clasped my ankles. But I had my doubts 
about Gunga Dass's benevolence, and kicked 
him off as he lay protesting. 

'' I believe you robbed him of everything 
he had. But I can find out in a minute or 
two. How long was the Sahib here } " 

" Nearly a year and a half. I think he 
must have gone mad. But hear me swear. 
Protector of the Poor ! Won't Your Honor 
hear me swear that I never touched an article 
that belonged to him .'' What is Your Wor- 
ship going to do ? " 

I had taken Gunga Dass by the waist and 
had hauled him on to the platform opposite 
the deserted burrow. As I did so I thought 
of my wretched fellow-prisoner's unspeakable 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 83 

misery among all these horrors for eighteen 
months, and the final agony of dying like a 
rat in a hole, with a bullet-wound in the 
stomach. Gunga Dass fancied I was going 
to kill him and howled pitifully. The rest of 
the population, in the plethora that follows a 
full flesh meal, watched us without stirring. 

" Go inside, Gunga Dass," said I, " and 
fetch it out.'' 

I was feeling sick and faint with horror 
now. Gunga Dass nearly rolled off the plat- 
form and howled aloud. 

" But I am Brahmin, Sahib — a high-caste 
Brahmin. By your soul, by your father's soul, 
do not make me do this thing ! " 

" Brahmin or no Brahmin, by my soul and 
my father's soul, in you go ! " I said, and, 
seizing him by the shoulders, I crammed his 
head into the mouth of the burrow, kicked 
the rest of him in, and, sitting down, covered 
my face with my hands. 

At the end of a few minutes I heard a rustle 
and a creak; then Gunga Dass in a sobbing, 
choking whisper speaking to himself ; then a 
soft thud — and I uncovered my eyes. 

The dry sand had turned the corpse en- 
trusted to its keeping into a yellow-brown 
mummy. I told Gunga Dass to stand off 
while I examined it. The body — clad in an 
olive-green hunting-suit much stained and 
worn, with leather pads on the shoulders — 
was that of a man between thirty and forty, 
above middle height, with light, sandy hair. 



84 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

long mustache, and a rough unkempt beard. 
The left canine of the upper jaw was missing, 
and a portion of the lobe of the right ear was 
gone. On the second finger of the left hand 
was a ring — a shield-shaped bloodstone set in 
gold, with a monogram that might have been 
either " B. K." or " B. L." On the third 
finger of the right hand was a silver ring in 
the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and 
tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful 
of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at 
my feet, and, covering the face of the body 
with my handkerchief, I turned to examine 
these. I give the full list in the hope that it 
may lead to the identification of the unfortu- 
nate man : — 

1. Bowl of a briarwood pipe, serrated at the 
edge ; much worn and blackened ; bound with 
string at the screw. 

2. Two patent-lever keys ; wards of both 
broken. 

3. Tortoise-shell handled penknife, silver 
or nickel, name-plate, marked with monogram 
"B.K." 

4. Envelope, post-mark undecipherable, 
bearing a Victorian stamp, addressed to 
" Miss Mon — " (rest illegible) — " ham " — 
"nt." 

5. Imitation crocodile-skin note-book with 
pencil. First forty-five pages blank ; foui 
and a half illegible ; fifteen others filled with 
private memoranda relating chiefly to three 
persons — a Mrs. L. Singleton, abbreviated 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 85 

several times to "Lot Single," "Mrs. S. 
May," and " Garmison," referred to in places 
as " Jerry " or " Jack." 

6. Handle of small-sized hunting-knife. 
Blade snapped short. Buck's horn, diamond 
cut, with swivel and ring on the butt ; frag- 
ment of cotton cord attached. 

It must not be supposed that I inventoried 
all these things on the spot as fully as I have 
here written them down. The note-book first 
attracted my attention, and I put it in my 
pocket with a view to studying it later on. 
The rest of the articles I conveyed to my bur- 
row for safety's sake, and there, being a 
methodical man, I inventoried them. I then 
returned to the corpse and ordered Gunga 
Dass to help me to carry it out to the river- 
front. While we were engaged in this, the 
exploded shell of an old brown cartridge 
dropped out of one of the pockets and rolled 
at my feet. Gunga Dass had not seen it ; and 
I fell to thinking that a man does not carry 
exploded cartridge-cases, especially "browns," 
which will not bear loading twice, about with 
him when shooting. In other words, that 
cartridge-case had been fired inside the crater. 
Consequently there must be a gun somewhere. 
I was on the verge of asking Gunga Dass, but 
checked myself, knowing that he would lie. 
We laid the body down on the edge of the 
quicksand by the tussocks. It was my inten- 
tion to push it out and let it be swallowed up 
— the only possible mode of burial that I could 



86 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

think of. I ordered Gunga Dass to go 
away. 

Then I gingerly put the corpse out on the 
quicksand. In doing so, it was lying face 
downward, I tore the frail and rotten khaki 
shooting-coat open, disclosing a hideous cavity 
in the back. I have already told you that the 
dry sand had, as it were, mummified the body. 
A moment's glance showed that the gaping 
hole had been caused by a gun-shot wound ; 
the gun must have been fired with the muzzle 
almost touching the back. The shooting-coat, 
being intact, had been drawn over the body 
after death, which must have been instanta- 
neous. The secret of the poor wretch's death 
was plain to me in a flash. Some one of the 
crater, presumably Gunga Dass, must have 
shot him with his own gun — the gun that fitted 
the brown cartridges. He had never attempted 
to escape in the face of the rifle-fire from the 
boat. 

I pushed the corpse out hastily, and saw it 
sink from sight literally in a few seconds. I 
shuddered as I watched. In a dazed, half- 
conscious way I turned to peruse the note- 
book. A stained and discolored slip of paper 
had been inserted between the binding and 
the back, and dropped out as I opened the 
pages. This is what it contained: — ''Four 
out fro7n crow-dicmp : three left ; nine out; two 
right; three back; two left ; fourteen out ; two 
left; seveji out ; one left ; niiieback; tivo 7'ight ; 
six back ; four right ; seven back.'^ The paper 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 87 

had been burnt and charred at the edges. 
What it meant 1 could not understand. 1 sat 
down on the dried bents turning it over and 
over between my fingers, until I was aware of 
Gunga Dass standing immediately behind me 
with glowing eyes and outstretched hands. 

"Have you got it?" he panted. "Will 
you not let me look at it also ? I swear that 
I will return it." 

'' Got what ? Return what ? " I asked. 

"That which you have in your hands. It 
will help us both." He stretched out his 
long, bird-like talons, trembling with eager- 
ness. 

" I could never find it," he continued. 
" He had secreted it about his person. 
Therefore I shot him, but nevertheless I was 
unable to obtain it." 

Gunga Dass had quite forgotten his little 
fiction about the rifle-bullet. I received the 
information perfectly calmly. Morality is 
blunted by consorting with the Dead who are 
alive. 

" What on earth are you raving about ? 
What is it you want me to give you .-^ " 

" The piece of paper in the note-book. It 
will help us both. Oh, you fool ! You fool ! 
Can you not see what it will do for us .^ We 
shall escape ! " 

His voice rose almost to a scream, and he 
danced with excitement before me. I own I 
was moved at the chance of getting away. 

" Don't skip ! Explain yourself. Do you 



88 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

mean to say that this slip of paper will help 
us ? What does it mean ? " 

" Read it aloud ! Read it aloud! I beg 
and I pray to you to read it aloud." 

I did so. Gunga Dass listened delightedly, 
and drew an irregular line in the sand with 
his fingers. 

" See now ! It was the length of his gun- 
barrels without the stock. I have those 
barrels. Four gun-barrels out from the place 
where I caught crows. Straight out ; do you 
follow me ? Then three left — Ah ! how well 
I remember when that man worked it out 
night after night. Then nine out, and so on. 
Out is always straight before you across the 
quicksand. He told me so before I killed him. " 

" But if you knew all this why didn't you 
get out before ? " 

" I did not know it. He told me that he 
was working it out a year and a half ago, and 
how he was working it out night after night 
when the boat had gone away, and he could 
get out near the quicksand safely. Then he 
said that we would get away together. But 
I was afraid that he would leave me behind 
one night when he had worked it all out, and 
so I shot him. Besides, it is not advisable 
that the men who once get in here should 
escape. Only I, and /am a Brahmin." 

The prospect of escape had brought Gunga 
Dass's caste back to him. He stood up, 
walked about and gesticulated violently. 
Eventually I managed to make him talk 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 89 

soberly, and he told me how this Englishman 
had spent six months night after night in ex- 
ploring, inch by inch, the passage across the 
quicksand ; how he had declared it to be sim- 
plicity itself up to within about twenty yards 
of the river bank after turning the Hank of 
the left horn of the horseshoe. This much he 
had evidently not completed when Gunga Dass 
shot him with his own gun. 

In my frenzy of delight at the possibilities 
of escape I recollect shaking hands effusively 
with Gunga Dass, after we had decided that 
we were to make an attempt to get away that 
very night. It was weary work waiting 
throughout the afternoon. 

About ten o'clock, as far as I could judge, 
when the Moon had just risen above the lip 
of the crater, Gunga Dass made a move for 
his burrow to bring out the gun-barrels 
whereby to measure our path. All the other 
wretched inhabitants had retired to their lairs 
long ago. The guardian boat drifted down- 
stream some hours before, and we were ut- 
terly alone by the crow-clump. Gunga Dass, 
while carrying the gun-barrels, let slip the 
piece of paper which was to be our guide. I 
stooped down hastily to recover it, and, as I 
did so, I was aware that the diabolical Brah- 
min was aiming a violent blow at the back of 
my head with the gun-barrels. It was too 
late to turn round. I must have received the 
blow somewhere on the nape of my neck. A 
hundred thousand fiery stars danced before 



90 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

my eyes, and I fell forward senseless at the 
edge of the quicksand. 

When I recovered consciousness, the Moon 
was going down, and I was sensible of intol- 
erable pain in the back of my head. Gunga 
Dass had disappeared and my mouth was full 
of blood. I lay down again and prayed that 
I might die without more ado. Then the un- 
reasoning fury which I have before mentioned 
laid hold upon me, and I staggered inland 
tow^ards the walls of the crater. It seemed 
that some one was calling to me in a whisper 
— " Sahib ! Sahib ! Sahib ! " exactly as my 
bearer used to call me in the mornings. I 
fancied that I was delirious until a handful of 
sand fell at my feet. Then I looked up and 
saw a head peering down into the amphi- 
theater — the head of Dunnoo, my dog-boy, 
who attended to my collies. As soon as he 
had attracted my attention, he held up his 
hand and showed a rope. I motioned, stag- 
gering to and fro the while, that he should 
throw it down. It was a couple of leather 
punkah-ropes knotted together, with a loop at 
one end. I slipped the loop over my head 
and under my arms ; heard Dunnoo urge 
something forward ; was conscious that I was 
being dragged, face downward, up the steep 
sand slope, and the next instant found myself 
choked and half fainting on the sand hills 
overlooking the crater. Dunnoo, with his face 
ashy gray in the moonlight, implored me not 
to stay but to get back to my tent at once. 



strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes 91 

It seems that he had tracked Pornic's foot- 
prints fourteen miles across the sands to the 
crater ; had returned and told my servants, 
who flatly refused to meddle with any one, 
white or black, once fallen into the hideous 
Village of the Dead ; whereupon Dunnoo had 
taken one of my ponies and a couple of pun- 
kah ropes, returned to the crater, and hauled 
me out as I have described. 

To cut a long story short, Dunnoo is now 
my personal servant on a gold mohur a month 
— a sum which I still think far too little for 
the services he has rendered. Nothing on 
earth will induce me to go near that devilish 
spot again, or to reveal its whereabouts more 
clearly than I have done. Of Gunga Dass I 
have never found a trace, nor do I wish to do. 
My sole motive in giving this to be published 
is the hope that some one may possibly 
identify, from the details and the inventory 
which I have given above, the corpse of the 
man in the olive-green hunting-suit. 



THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. 



" Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he 
be found worthy." 

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair con- 
duct of life, and one not easy to follow. I 
have been fellow to a beggar again and again 
under circumstances which prevented either 
of us finding out whether the other was 
worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, 
though I once came near to kinship with what 
might have been a veritable King and was 
promised the reversion of a Kingdom — army, 
law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. 
But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is 
dead, and if I want a crown I must go and 
hunt it for myself. 

The beginning of everything was in a rail- 
way train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. 
There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which 
necessitated traveling, not Second-class, 
which is only half as dear as First-class, but 
by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. 
There are no cushions in the Intermediate- 
class, and the population are either Inter- 
mediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which 
for a long night journey is nasty, or Loafer, 
which is amusing though intoxicated. Inter- 
92 



The Man Who Would be King 93 

mediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. 
They carry their food in bundles and pots, 
and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat- 
sellers, and drink the roadside water. That 
is why in the hot weather Intermediates are 
taken out of the carriages dead, and in all 
weathers are most properly looked down upon. 
My particular Intermediate happened to be 
empty till I reached Nasirabad, when a huge 
gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered and follow- 
ing the custom of Intermediates, passed the 
time of day. He was a wanderer and a vaga- 
bond like myself, but with an educated taste 
for whisky. He told tales of things he had 
seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of 
the Empire into which he had penetrated, and 
of adventures in which he risked his life for a 
few days' food. " If India was filled with 
men like you and me, not knowing more than 
the crows where they'd get their next day's 
rations, it isn't seventy millions of revenue the 
land would be paying — it's seven hundred 
millions," said he ; and as I looked at his 
mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with 
him. We talked politics — the politics of 
Loaferdom that sees things from the underside 
where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off 
— and we talked postal arrangements because 
my friend wanted to send a telegram back 
from the next station to Ajmir, which is the 
turning-off place from the Bombay to the 
Mhow line as you travel westward. My friend 
had no money beyond eight annas which he 



94 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, 
owing to the hitch in the Budget before men- 
tioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness 
where, though I should resume touch with the 
Treasury, there were no telegraph offices. I 
was, therefore, unable to help him in any way. 

" We might threaten a Station-master, and 
make him send a wire on tick," said my friend, 
"but that'd mean inquiries for you and for 
me, and I've got my hands full these days. 
Did you say you are traveling back along this 
line within any days ? " 

"Within ten," I said. 

" Can't you make it eight ? " said he. "Mine 
is rather urgent business." 

"I can send your telegram within ten days 
if that will serve you," I said. 

" I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him now 
I think of it. It's this way. He leaves Delhi 
on the 23d for Bombay. That means he'll be 
running through Ajmir about the night of the 
23d." 

" But I'm going into the Indian Desert," I 
explained. 

"Well and good," said he. "You'll be 
changing at Marwar Junction to get into Jodh- 
pore territory — you must do that and he'll be 
coming through Marwar junction in the early 
morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. 
Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time 1 
'Twon't be inconveniencing you because I 
know that there's precious few pickings to be 
got out of these Central India States — even 



The Man Who Would be King 95 

though you pretend to be correspondent of 
the Backwoods7nanr 

" Have you ever tried that trick ? " I asked. 

" Again and again, but the Residents find you 
out, and then you get escorted to the Border 
before you've time to get your knife into them. 
But about my friend here. I must give him a 
word o' mouth to tell him what's come to me 
or else he won't know where to go. I would 
take it more than kind of you if you was to 
come out of Central India in time to catch him 
at Marwar Junction, and say to him : — ' He 
has gone South for the week.' He'll know 
what that means. He's a big man with a red 
beard, and a great swell he is. You'll find him 
sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage 
round him in a Second-class compartment. 
But don't you be afraid. Slip down the 
window, and say : — ' He has gone South for 
the week,' and he'll tumble. It's only cutting 
your time of stay in those parts by two days, 
I ask you as a stranger — going to the West," 
he said with emphasis. 

" Where have you come from t " said I. 

" From the East," said he, " and I am hop- 
ing that you will give him the message on the 
Square — for the sake of my Mother as well as 
your own." 

Englishmen are not usually softened by ap- 
peals to the memory of their mothers, but for 
certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, 
I saw fit to agree. 

*' It's more than a little matter," said he, 



96 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

" and that's why I ask you to do it — and now 
I know that I can depend on you doing it. A 
Second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and 
a red-haired man asleep in it. You'll be sure 
to remember. I get out at the next station, 
and I must hold on there till he comes or 
sends me what I want." 

" I'll give the message if I catch him," I 
said, " and for the sake of your Mother as 
well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. 
Don't try to run the Central India States just 
now as the correspondent of the Backwoods- 
man. There's a real one knocking about 
here, and it might lead to trouble." 

"Thank you," said he simply, "and when 
will the swine be gone ? I can't starve be- 
cause he's ruining my work. I wanted to get 
hold of the Degumber Rajah down here about 
his father's widow, and give him a jump." 

"What did he do to his father's widow, 
then ? " 

" Filled her up with red pepper and slip- 
pered her to death as she hung from a beam. 
I found that out myself and I'm the only man 
that would dare going into the State to get 
hush-money for it. They'll try to poison me, 
same as they did in Chortumna when I went 
on the loot there. But you'll give the man at 
Marwar Junction my message ? " 

He got out at a little roadside station, and 
I reflected. I had heard, more than once, of 
men personating correspondents of news- 
papers and bleeding small Native States with 



The Man Who Would be King 97 

threats of exposure, but I had never met any 
of the caste before. They lead a hard life, 
and generally die with great suddenness. 
The Native States have a wholesome horror 
of English newspapers, which may throw light 
on their peculiar methods of government, and 
do their best to choke correspondents with 
champagne, or drive them out of their mind 
with four-in-hand barouches. They do not 
understand that nobody cares a straw for the 
internal administration of Native States so 
long as oppression and crime are kept within 
decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, 
drunk, or diseased from one end of the year 
to the other. Native States were created by 
Providence in order to supply picturesque 
scenery, tigers, and tall-writing. They are 
the dark places of the earth, full of unimagin- 
able cruelty, touching the Railway and the 
Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the 
days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the 
train 1 did business with divers Kings, and in 
eight days passed through many changes of 
life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and 
consorted with Princes and Politicals, drink- 
ing from crystal and eating from silver. Some- 
times I lay out upon the ground and devoured 
what I could get, from a plate made of a flap- 
jack, and drank the running water, and slept 
under the same rug as my servant- It was 
all in the day's work. 

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert 
upon the proper date, as I had promised, and 
7 



98 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

the night INIail set me down at Marwar Junc- 
tion, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, 
native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore. 
The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short 
halt at Marwar. She arrived as I got in, and 
I had just time to hurry to her platform and 
go down the carriages. There was only one 
Second-class on the train. I slipped the win- 
dow and looked down upon a flaming red 
beard, half covered by a railway rug. That 
was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him 
gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt and 
I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It 
was a great and shining face. 

" Tickets again ? " said he. 

" No," said I. " I am to tell you that he is 
gone South for the week. He is gone South 
for the week ! " 

The train had begun to move out. The red 
man rubbed his eyes. " He has gone South 
for the week," he repeated. " Now that's 
just like his impidence. Did he say that I 
was to give you anything? — 'Cause I won't." 

" He didn't," I said and dropped away, and 
watched the red lights die out in the dark. It 
was horribly cold because the wind was blow- 
ing off the sands. I climbed into my own 
train — not an Intermediate Carriage this time 
— and went to sleep. 

If the man with the beard had given me a 
rupee I should have kept it as a memento of a 
rather curious affair. But the consciousness 
of having done my duty was my only reward. 



The Man Who Would be King 99 

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like 
my friends could not do any good if they 
foregathered and personated correspondents ot 
newspapers, and might, if they ^ stuck up 
one of the little rat-trap states of Central India 
or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into 
serious difficulties. I therefore took some 
trouble to describe them as accurately as i 
could remember to people who would be m- 
terested in deporting them: and succeeded 
sol was later informed, in having them headed 
back from the Degumber borders. 

Then I became respectable, and returned 
to an office where there were no Kings and 
no incidents except the daily manufacture ot 
a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to 
attract every conceivable sort of person, to the 
preiudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies 
arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly 
abandon all his duties to describe a Christian 
nrize-o-ivingin a back-slum of a perfectly inac- 
cessible village ; Colonels who have been 
overpassed for commands sit down and sketch 
the outline of a series of ten, twelve, or 
twenty-four leading articles on Seniority verstis 
Selection ; missionaries wish to know why 
they have not been permitted to escape from 
their regular vehicles of abuse and swear at a 
brother-missionary under special patronage ot 
the editorial We ; stranded theatrical com- 
panies troop up to explain that they cannot 
pay for their advertisements, but on their re- 
turn from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so 



100 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

with interest ; inventors of patent punkah- 
pulling machines, carriage couplings and un- 
breakable swords and axle-trees call with 
specifications in their pockets and hours at 
their disposal ; tea-companies enter and elab- 
orate their prospectuses with the ofhce pens ; 
secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have 
the glories of their last dance more fully ex- 
pounded ; strange ladies rustle in and say : — 
I want a hundred lady's cards printed at o?ice, 
please," which is manifestly part of an Editor's 
duty ; and every dissolute ruffian that ever 
tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his 
business to ask for employment as a proof- 
reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell 
is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed 
on the Continent, and Empires are saying — 
** You're another," and Mister Gladstone is 
calling down brimstone upon the British 
Dominions, and the little black copy-boys are 
whining, " kaa-pi-chay-ha-yeh " (copy wanted) 
like tired bees, and most of the paper is as 
blank as Modrek's shield. 

But that is the amusing part of the year. 
There are other six months wherein none ever 
come to call, and the thermometer walks inch 
by inch up to the top of the glass, and the 
office is darkened to just above reading-light, 
and the press machines are red-hot of touch, 
and nobody writes anything but accounts of 
amusements in the Hill-stations or obituary 
notices. Then the telephone becomes a tink- 
ling terror, because it tells you of the sudden 



The Man Who Would be King loi 

deaths of men and women that you knew in- 
timately, and the prickly-heat covers you as 
with a garment, and you sit down and write : 
• — " A slight increase of sickness is reported 
from the Khuda Janta Khan District. The 
outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and, 
thanks to the energetic efforts of the District 
authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, 
however, with deep regret we record the death, 
etc." 

Then the sickness really breaks out, and 
the less recording and reporting the better 
for the peace of the subscribers. But the 
Empires and the Kings continue to divert 
themselves as selfishly as before, and the 
Foreman thinks that a daily paper really 
ought to come out once in twenty-four hours, 
and all the people at the Hill-stations in the 
middle of their amusements say : — " Good 
gracious! Why can't the paper be spark- 
ling } I'm sure there's plenty going on up 
here." 

That is the dark half of the moon, and, as 
the advertisements say, " must be experienced 
to be appreciated." 

It was in that season, and a remarkably 
evil season, that the paper began running the 
last issue of the week on Saturday night, 
which is to say Sunday morning, after the 
custom of a London paper. This was a great 
convenience, for immediately after the paper 
was put to bed, the dawn would lower the 
thermometer from 96° to almost 84° for half 



102 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

an hour, and in that chill — you have no idea 
how cold is 84° on the grass until you begin 
to pray for it — a very tired man could set off 
to sleep ere the heat roused him. 

One Saturday night it was my pleasant 
duty to put the paper to bed alone. A King 
or courtier or a courtesan or a community was 
going to die or get a new Constitution, or do 
something that was important on the other 
side of the world, and the paper was to be 
held open till the latest possible minute in 
order to catch the telegram. It was a pitchy 
black night, as stifling as a June night can be, 
and the loo^ the red-hot wind from the west- 
ward, was booming among the tinder-dry 
trees and pretending that the rain was on its 
heels. Now and again a spot of almost boil- 
ing water would fall on the dust with the flop 
of a frog, but all our weary world knew that 
was only pretense. It was a shade cooler in 
the press-room than the office, so I sat there, 
while the type ticked and clicked, and the 
night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all 
but naked compositors wiped the sweat from 
their foreheads and called for water. The 
thing that was keeping us back, whatever it 
was, would not come off, though the loo 
dropped and the last type was set, and the 
whole round earth stood still in the choking 
heat, wdth its finger on its lip, to wait the 
event. I drowsed, and wondered whether 
the telegraph was a blessing, and whether 
this dying man, or struggling people, was 



The Man Who Would be King 103 

aware of the inconvenience the delay was 
causing. There was no special reason beyond 
the heat and worry to make tension, but, as. 
the clock-hands crept up to three o'clock and 
the machines spun their fly-wheels two and 
three times to see that all was in order, before 
I said the word that would set them off, I 
could have shrieked aloud. 

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels 
shivered the quiet into little bits. I rose tO' 
go away, but two men in white clothes stood 
in front of me. The first one said : — " It's 
him!" The second said : — " So it is ! " And 
they both laughed almost as loudly as the 
machinery roared, and mopped their fore- 
heads. " We see there was a light burning 
across the road and we were sleeping in that 
ditch there for coolness, and I said to my 
friend here, ' The office is open. Let's come 
along and speak to him as turned us back 
from the Degumber State," said the smaller 
of the two. He was the man I had met in 
the Mhow train, and his fellow was the red- 
bearded man of Marwar Junction. There was 
no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the 
beard of the other. 

I was not pleased, because I wished to gO' 
to sleep, not to squabble with loafers. " What 
do you want ? " I asked. 

"Half an hour's talk with you cool and 
comfortable, in the office," said the red- 
bearded man. "We'd Me some drink — the 
Contrack doesn't begin yet, Peachey, so you 



104 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

needn't look — but what we really want is ad- 
vice. We don't want money. We ask you 
as a favor, because you did us a bad turn 
about Degumber." 

I led from the press-room to the stifling 
office with the maps on the walls, and the 
red-haired man rubbed his hands. "That's 
something like," said he. " This was the 
proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me 
introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, 
that's him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, that 
is 7ne^ and the less said about our professions 
the better, for we have been most things in 
our time. Soldier, sailor, compositor, pho- 
tographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and 
correspondents of the Backwoods7?ia?i when 
we thought the paper wanted one. Carne- 
han is sober, and so am I. Look at us first 
and see that's sure. It will save you cutting 
into my talk. We'll take one of your cigars 
apiece, and you shall see us light." 

I watched the test. The men were abso- 
lutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid 

peg. 

"Well a7id good," said Carnehan of the 
eyebrows, wiping the froth from his mus- 
tache. " Let me talk now, Dan. We have 
been all over India, mostly on foot. We 
have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty 
contractors, and all that, and we have de- 
cided that India isn't big enough for such 
as us." 

They certainly were too big for the office. 



The Man Who Would be King 105 

Dravot's beard seemed to fill half the room 
and Carnehan's shoulders the other half, as 
they sat on the big table. Carnehan contin- 
ued : — " The country isn't half worked out 
because they that governs it won't let you 
touch it. They spend all their blessed time 
in governing it, and you can't lift a spade, 
nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor any- 
thing like that without all the government 
saying — ' Leave it alone and let us govern.' 
Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, 
and go away to some other place where a 
man isn't crowded and can come to his own. 
We are not little men, and there is nothing 
that we are afraid of except Drink, and we 
have signed a Contrack on that. Therefoi'e^ 
we are going away to be Kings." 

" Kings in our own right," muttered 
Dravot. 

" Yes, of course," I said. "You've been 
tramping in the sun, and it's a very warm 
night, and hadn't you better sleep over the 
notion ? Come to-morrow. " 

"Neither drunk nor sunstruck, " said 
Dravot. " We have slept over the notion 
half a year, and require to see Books and 
Atlases, and we have decided that there is 
only one place now in the world that two 
strong men can Z2.x-'^-whack. They call it 
Kafiristan. By my reckoning it's the top 
right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more 
than three hundred miles from Peshawar. 
They have two and thirty heathen idols 



io6 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

there, and we'll be the thirty-third. It's a 
mountaineous country, and the women of those 
parts are very beautiful." 

" But that is provided against in the Con- 
track," said Carnehan. "Neither Women 
nor Liqu-or, Daniel." 

'' And that's all we know, except that no 
one has gone there, and they fight, and in any 
place where they fight a man who knows how 
to drill men can always be a King. We shall 
go to those parts and say to any King we 
find — ' D' you want to vanquish your foes ? ' 
and we will show him how to drill men ; for 
that we know better than anything else. Then 
we will subvert that King and seize his 
throne and establish a Dy-nasty." 

" You'll be cut to pieces before you're 
fifty miles across the Border," I said. " You 
have to travel through Afghanistan to get to 
that country. It's one mass of mountains 
and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman 
has been through it. The people are utter 
brutes, and even if you reached them you 
couldn't do anything." 

" That's more like," said Carnehan. " If 
you could think us a little more mad we 
would be more pleased. We have come to 
you to know about this country, to read a 
book about it, and to be shown maps. We 
want you to tell us that we are fools and to 
show us your books." He turned to the 
book-cases. 

" Are you at all in earnest } " I said. 



The Man Who Would be King 107 

*' A little," said Dravot sweetly. " As big 
a map as you have got, even if it's all blank 
where Kafiristan is, and any books you've 
got. We can read, though we aren't very 
educated." 

I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the- 
inch map of India, and two smaller Frontier 
maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of 
the E?icydopcedia Britannica, and the men 
consulted them. 

" See here ! " said Dravot, his thumb on 
the map. " Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me 
know the road. We was there with Roberts's 
Army. We'll have to turn off to the right at 
Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then 
we get among the hills — fourteen thousand 
feet — fifteen thousand — it will be cold work 
there, but it don't look very far on the 
map." 

I handed him Wood on the Sources of the 
Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the Ency- 
dopcBciia. 

" They're a mixed lot," said Dravot reflec- 
tively ; " and it won't help us to know the 
names of their tribes. The more tribes the 
more they'll fight, and the better for us. 
From Jagdallak to Ashang. H'mm ! " 

" But all the information about the country 
is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be," I 
protested. " No one knows anything about 
it really. Here's the file of the United Ser- 
vices^ Institute. Read what Bellew says." 

" Blow Bellew ! " said Carnehan. " Dan, 



io8 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

they're an all-fired lot of heathens, but this 
book here says they think they're related to 
us English." 

I smoked while the men pored over Raverty, 
Wood, the maps and the Encyclopcedia. 

" There is no use your waiting," said Dravot 
politely. " It's about four o'clock now. We'll 
go before six o'clock if you want to sleep, and 
we won't steal any of the papers. Don't you 
sit up. We're two harmless lunatics, and if 
you come, to-morrow evening, down to the 
Serai we'll say good-by to you." 

" You a7'e two fools," I answered. " You'll 
be turned back at the Frontier or cut up the 
minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you 
want any money or a recommendation down- 
country ? I can help you to the chance of 
work next week." 

*' Next week we shall be hard at work our- 
selves, thank you," said Dravot. " It isn't 
so easy being a King as it looks. When we've 
got our Kingdom in going order we'll let you 
know, and you can come up and help us to 
govern it." 

"Would two lunatics make a Contrack like 
that ? " said Carnehan, with subdued pride, 
showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper 
on which was written the following. I copied 
it, then and there, as a curiosity : — 

This Contract between me and you persuing 
witnesseth in the name of God — Amen and so 
forth. 



The Man Who Would be King 109 

( One) That me and you will settle this matter 
together : i. e., to be Kings of Kafir - 
istan. 
{Two) That you a7id me will not, zvhile this 
matter is heing settled, look at any 
Liquor, 7ior any Woman black, 
white or b7'ow?i, so as to get mixed 
up with 07ie or the other harmful. 
{Three) That we conduct ourselves ivith dignity 
and discretiofi, and if one of us gets 
into trouble the other will stay by 
hi77i. 
Sig7ied by you a7id 7ne this day. 

Peachey Taliaferro Car7ieha7i. 

Da7iiel Dravot. 

Both Ge7itle77ien at Lag7'e. 

"There was no need for the last article,"" 
said Carnehan, blushing modestly; "but it 
looks regular. Now you know the sort of 
men that loafers are — we a7'e loafers, Dan, 
until we get out of India — and do you think 
that we would sign aContrack like that unless 
we was in earnest ? We have kept away from 
the two things that make life worth having." 

" You won't enjoy your lives much longer 
if you are going to try this idiotic adventure. 
Don't set the office on fire," I said, "and go 
away before nine o'clock." 

I left them still poring over the maps and 
making notes on the back of the " Contrack." 
" Be sure to come down to the Serai to-mor- 
row," were their parting words. 



no The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

The Kumharsen Serai is the great four- 
square sink of humanity where the strings of 
camels and horses from the North load and 
unload. All the nationalities of Central Asia 
may be found there, and most of the folk of 
India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet 
Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye- 
teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises^ Per- 
sian pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep 
and musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get 
many strange things for nothing. In the 
afternoon I went down there to see whether 
my friends intended to keep their word or 
were lying about drunk. 

A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and 
rags stalked up to me, gravely twisting a 
child's paper whirligig. Behind him was his 
servant bending under the load of a crate of 
mud toys. The two were loading up two 
camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai 
watched them with shrieks of laughter. 

"The priest is mad," said a horse-dealer 
to me. " He is going up to Kabul to sell 
toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to 
honor or have his head cut off. He came in 
here this morning and has been behaving 
madly ever since." 

" The witless are under the protection of 
God," stammered a flat-cheeked Usberg in 
broken Hindi. " They foretell future events." 

" Would they could have foretold that my 
caravan would have been cut up by the Shin- 
waris almost within shadow of the Pass ! " 



The Man Who Would be King iii 

grunted the Eusufzai agent of a Rajputana 
trading-house whose goods had been felo- 
niously diverted into the hands of other rob- 
bers just across the Border, and whose mis- 
fortunes were the laughing-stock of the 
bazar. " Ohe, priest, whence come you and 
whither do you go ? " 

" From Roum have I come," shouted the 
priest, waving his whirligig ; " from Roum, 
blown by the breath of a hundred devils 
across the sea ! O thieves, robbers, liars, the 
blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and per- 
jurers ! Who will take the Protected of God 
to the North to sell charms that are never 
still to the Amir ? The camels shall not gall, 
the sons shall not fall sick, and the wives 
shall remain faithful while they are away, of 
the men who give me place in their caravan. 
Who will assist me to slipper the King of the 
Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel .'' 
The protection of Pir Khan be upon his la- 
bors ! " He spread out the skirts of his ga- 
berdine and pirouetted between the lines of 
tethered horses. 

'* There starts a caravan from Peshawar to 
Kabul in twenty days, Huznit,''' said the 
Eusufzai trader. " My camels go therewith. 
Do thou also go and bring us good-luck." 

" I will go even now ! " shouted the priest. 
" I will depart upon my winged camels, and 
be at Peshawar in a day ! Ho ! Hazar Mir 
Khan," he yelled to his servant, " drive out 
the camels, but let me first mount my own." 



112 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

He leaped on the back of his beast as it 
knelt, and, turning round to me, cried: — 
" Come thou also. Sahib, a little along the road, 
and I will sell thee a charm — an amulet that 
shall make thee King of Kafiristan." 

Then the light broke upon me, and I fol- 
lowed the two camels out of the Serai, till we 
reached open road and the priest halted. 

" What d' you think o' that ? " said he in 
English. " Carnehan can't talk their patter, 
so I've made him my servant. He makes a 
handsome servant. 'Tisn't for nothing that 
I've been knocking about the country for 
fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat ? 
We'll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till 
we get to Jagdallak, and then we'll see if we 
can get donkeys for our camels, and strike 
into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, 
O Lor ! Put your hand under the camel-bags 
and tell me what you feel." 

I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and 
another. 

"Twenty of 'em," said Dravot placidly. 
"Twenty of 'em, and ammunition to corre- 
spond, under the whirligigs and the mud 
dolls." 

" Heaven help you if you are caught with 
those things ! " I said. " A Martini is worth 
her weight in silver among the Pathans." 

" Fifteen hundred rupees of capital — every 
rupee we could beg, borrow, or steal — are in- 
vested on these two camels," said Dravot. 
We won't get caught. We're going through 



The Man Who Would be King 113 

the Khaiber with a regular caravan. Who'd 
touch a poor mad priest ? " 

" Have you got everything you want ? " I 
asked, overcome with astonishment. 

" Not yet, but we shall soon. Give me a 
memento of your kindness, Bi'other. You did 
me a service yesterday, and that time in Mar- 
war. Half my Kingdom shall you have, as 
the saying is." I slipped a small charm com- 
pass from my watch-chain and handed it up to 
the priest. 

" Good-by," said Dravot, giving me his hand 
cautiously. " It's the last time we'll shake 
hands with an Englishman these many days. 
Shake hands with him, Carnehan," he cried, 
as the second camel passed me. 

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. 

Then the camels passed away along the 
dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. 
My eye could detect no failure in the dis- 
guises. The scene in the Serai attested that 
they were complete to the native mind. 
There was just the chance, therefore, that 
Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wan- 
der through Afghanistan without detection. 
But, beyond, they would find death, certain 
and awful death. 

Ten days later a native friend of mine, 
giving me the news of the day from Peshawar, 
wound up his letter with : — " There has been 
much laughter here on account of a certain 
mad priest who is going in his estimation to 
sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets 



114 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

which he ascribes as great charms to H. H. 
the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through 
Peshawar and associated himself to the 
Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. 
The merchants are pleased because through 
superstition they imagine that such mad fel- 
lows bring good-fortune." 

The two, then, were beyond the Border. I 
would have prayed for them, but, that night, 
a real King died in Europe, and demanded an 
obituary notice. 

The wheel of the world swings through the 
same phases again and again. Summer 
passed and winter thereafter, and came and 
passed again. The daily paper continued and 
I with it, and upon the third summer there fell 
a hot night, a night-issue, and a strained wait- 
ing for something to be telegraphed from the 
other side of the world, exactly as had hap- 
pened before. A few great men had died in 
the past two years, the machines worked with 
more clatter, and some of the trees in the 
Office garden were a few feet taller. But that 
was all the difference. 

I passed over to the press-room, and went 
through just such a scene as I have already 
described. The nervous tension was stronger 
than it had been two years before, and I felt 
the heat more acutely. At three o'clock I 
cried, " Print off," and turned to go, when 
there crept to my chair what was left of a 
man. He was bent into a circle, his head was 



The Man Who Would be King 115 

sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his 
feet one over the other like a bear. I could 
hardly see whether he walked or crawled — 
this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who ad- 
dressed me by name, crying that he was come 
back. " Can you give me a drink ? " he whim- 
pered. " For the Lord's sake, give me a 
drink ! " 

I went back to the office, the man following 
with groans of pain, and I turned up the lamp. 

"Don't you know me?" he gasped, drop- 
ping into a chair, and he turned his drawn 
face, surmounted by a shock of gray hair, to 
the light. 

I looked at him intently. Once before had 
I seen eyebrows that met over the nose in an 
inch-broad black band, but for the life of me 
I could not tell where. 

" I don't know you," I said, handing him 
the whisky. *' What can I do for you ? " 

He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shiv- 
ered in spite of the suffocating heat. 

" I've come back," he repeated ; " and I 
was the King of Kafiristan — me and Dravot 
— crowned Kings we was ! In this office 
we settled it — you setting there and giving us 
the books. I am Peachey — Peachey Talia- 
ferro Carnehan, and you've been setting here 
ever since — O Lord ! " 

I was more than a little astonished, and 
expressed my feelings accordingly. 

" It's true," said Carnehan, with a dry 
cackle, nursing his feet, which were wrapped 



ii6 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

in rags. " True as gospel. Kings we were, 
with crowns upon our heads — me and Dravot 
— poor Dan — oh, poor, poor Dan, that would 
never take advice, not though I begged of 
him ! " 

"Take the whisky," I said, "and take 
your own time. Tell me all you can recollect 
of everything from beginning to end. You 
got across the border on your camels, Dravot 
dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. 
Do you remember that ? " 

" I ain't mad — yet, but I shall be that way 
soon. Of course I remember. Keep looking 
at me, or maybe my words will go all to 
pieces. Keep looking at me in my eyes and 
don't say anything.'' 

I leaned forward and looked into his face 
as steadily as I could. He dropped one hand 
upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. 
It was twisted like a bird's claw, and upon 
the back was a ragged, red, diamond-shaped 
scar. 

'• No, don't look there. Look at ?;/^," said 
Carnehan. 

" That comes afterwards, but for the Lord's 
sake don't distrack me. We left with that 
caravan, me and Dravot playing all sorts of 
antics to amuse the people we were with. 
Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings 
when all the people was cooking their dinners 
— cooking their dinners, and .... what did 
they do then ? They lit little fires with sparks 
that went into Dravot's beard, and we all 



The Man Who Would be King 117 

laughed — fit to die. Little red fires they was, 
going into Dravot's big red beard — so funny." 
His eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly. 

" You went as far as Jagdallak with that 
caravan," I said at a venture, " after you had 
lit those fires. To Jagdallak, where you 
turned off to try to get into Kafiristan." 

" No, we didn't neither. What are you 
talking about ? We turned off before Jagdallak, 
because we heard the roads was good. But 
they wasn't good enough for our two camels — 
mine and Dravot's. When we left the caravan, 
Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, 
and said we would be heathen, because the 
Kafirs didn^t allow Mohammedans to talk to 
them. So we dressed betwixt and between, 
and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I never 
saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned 
half his beard, and slung a sheepskin over his 
shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns. 
He shaved mine, too, and made me wear 
outrageous things to look like a heathen. 
That was in a most mountaineous country, and 
our camels couldn't go along any more because 
of the mountains. They were tall and black, 
and coming home I saw them fight like wild 
goats — there are lots of goats in Kafiristan. 
And these mountains, they never keep still, no 
more than the goats. Always fighting they are, 
and don't let you sleep at night." 

" Take some more whisky," I said very 
slowly. " What did you and Daniel Dravot 
do when the camels could go no further 



li8 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

because of the rough roads that led into 
Kafiristan ? " 

" What did which do ? There was a party 
called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan that was 
with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him ? 
He died out there in the cold. Slap from the 
bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting 
in the air like a penny whirligig that you can 
sell to the Amir. — No ; they was two for three 
ha'pence, those whirligigs, or I am much 
mistaken and woful sore. And then these 
camels were no use, and Peachey said to 
Dravot — ' For the Lord's sake, let's get out 
of this before our heads are chopped off,' and 
with that they killed the camels all among 
the mountains, not having anything in partic- 
ular to eat, but first they took off the boxes 
with the guns and the ammunition, till two 
men came along driving four mules. Dravot 
up and dances in front of them, singing, — 
' Sell me four mules.' Says the first man, — 
' If you are rich enough to buy, you are rich 
enough to rob ; ' but before ever he could put 
his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck 
over his knee, and the other party runs away. 
So Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifies 
that was taken off the camels, and together 
we starts forward into those bitter cold 
mountaineous parts, and never a road broader 
than the back of your hand.'^ 

He paused for a moment, while I asked him 
if he could remember the nature of the coun- 
try through which he had journeyed. 



The Man Who Would be King 119 

*' I am telling you as straight as I can, but 
my head isn't as good as it might be. They 
drove nails through it to make me hear better 
how Dravot died. The country was moun- 
taineous and the mules were most contrary, and 
the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. 
They went up and up, and down and down, 
and that other party, Carnehan, was implor- 
ing of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, 
for fear of bringing down the tremenjus ava- 
lanches. But Dravot says that if a King 
couldn't sing it wasn't worth being King, and 
whacked the mules over the rump, and never 
took no heed for ten cold days. We came to 
a big level valley all among the mountains, 
and the mules were near dead, so we killed 
them, not having anything in special for them 
or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and 
played odd and even with the cartridges that 
was jolted out. 

" Then ten men with bows and arrows ran 
down that valley, chasing twenty men with 
bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. 
They was fair men — fairer than you or me 
— with yellow hair and remarkable well built. 
Says Dravot, unpacking the guns — ' This is 
the beginning of the business. We'll fight for 
the ten men,' and with that he fires two rifles 
at the twenty men, and drops one of them at 
two hundred yards from the rock where we 
was sitting. The other men began to run, but 
Carnehan and Dravot sits on the boxes pick- 
ing them off at all ranges, up and down the 



120 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that 
had run across the snow too, and they fires a 
footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots 
above their heads and they all falls down flat. 
Then he walks over them and kicks them, and 
then he lifts them up and shakes hands all 
round to make them friendly like. He calls 
them and gives them the boxes to carry, and 
waves his hand for all the world as though he 
was King already. They takes the boxes and 
him across the valley and up the hill into a 
pine wood on the top, where there was half a 
dozen big stone idols. Dravot he goes to the 
biggest — a fellow they call Imbra — and lays a 
rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his 
nose respectful with his own nose, patting him 
on the head, and saluting in front of it. He 
turns round to the men and nods his head, 
and says, — ' That's all right. I'm in the know 
too, and all these old jim-jams are my friends.' 
Then he opens his mouth and points down it, 
and when the first man brings him food, he 
says — ' No ; ' and when the second man brings 
him food, he says — ' No ; ' but when one of 
the old priests and the boss of the village 
brings him food, he says — 'Yes;' very 
haughty, and eats it slow. That was how we 
came to our first village, without any trouble, 
just as though we had tumbled from the skies. 
But we tumbled from one of those damned 
rope-bridges, you see, and you couldn't expect 
a man to laugh much after that." 

"Take some more whisky and go on," I 



The Man Who Would be King 121 

said. " That was the first village you came 
into. How did you get to be King? " 

'^ I wasn't King," said Carnehan. " Dravot 
he was the King, and a handsome man he 
looked with the gold crown on his head and 
all. Him and the other party stayed in that 
village, and every morning Dravot sat by the 
side of old Imbra, and the people came and 
worshiped. That was Dravot's order. Then 
a lot of men came into the valley, and Carne- 
han and Dravot picks them off with the rifles 
before they knew where they was, and runs 
down into the valley and up again the other 
side, and finds another village, same as the 
first one, and the people all falls down flat on 
their faces and Dravot says, — ' Now what is 
the trouble between you two villages ? ' and 
the people points to a woman, as fair as you 
or me, that was carried off, and Dravot takes 
her back to the first village and counts up the 
dead — eight there was. For each dead man 
Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and 
waves his arms like a whirligig and ' That's 
all right,' says he. Then he and Carnehan 
takes the big boss of each village by the arm 
and walks them down into the valley, and 
shows them how to scratch a line with a spear 
right down the valley, and gives each a sod 
of turf from both sides o' the line. Then all 
the people comes down and shouts like the 
devil and all, and Dravot says, — ' Go and dig 
the land, and be fruitful and multiply,' which 
they did, though they didn't understand. Then 



122 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

we asks the names of things in their lingo- 
bread and water and fire and idols and such, 
and Dravot leads the priest of each village up 
to the idol, and says he must sit there and 
judge the people, and if anything goes wrong 
he is to be shot. 

" Next week they was all turning up the 
land in the valley as quiet as bees and much 
prettier, and the priests heard all the com- 
plaints and told Dravot in dumb show what 
it was about. ' That's just the beginning,' 
says Dravot. ' They think we're Gods.' He 
and Carnehan picks out twenty good men and 
shows them how to click off a rifle, and form 
fours, and advance in line, and they was very 
pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of 
it. Then betakes out his pipe and his baccy- 
pouch and leaves one at one village and one 
at the other, and off we two goes to see what 
was to be done in the next valley. That was 
all rock and there was a little village there, 
and Carnehan says, — ' Send 'em to the old 
valley to plant,' and takes ^em there and gives 
'em some land that wasn't took before. 
They were a poor lot, and we blooded 'em 
with a kid before letting 'em into the new 
Kingdom. That was to impress the people, 
and then they settled down quiet, and Carne- 
han went back to Dravot who had got into 
another valley, all snow and ice and most 
mountaineous. There was no people there 
and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots 
one of them, and goes on till he finds some 



The Man Who Would be King 123 

people in a village, and the Army explains 
that unless the people wants to be killed they 
had better not shoot their little matchlocks ; 
for they had matchlocks. We makes friends 
with the priest and I stays there alone with 
two of the Army, teaching the men how to 
drill, and a thundering big Chief comes across 
the snow with kettle-drums and horns twang- 
ing, because he heard there was a new God 
kicking about. Carnehan sights for the brown 
of the men half a mile across the snow and 
wings one of them. Then he sends a mes- 
sage to the Chief that, unless he wishes to be 
killed, he must come and shake hands with me 
and leave his arms behind. The Chief comes 
alone first, and Carnehan shakes hands with 
him and whirls his arms about, same as Dravot 
used, and very much surprised that Chief was, 
and strokes my eyebrows. Then Carnehan 
goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb 
show if he had an enemy he hated. ' I have,' 
says the Chief. So Carnehan weeds out the 
pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army 
to show them drill and at the end of two weeks 
the men can maneuver about as well as Vol- 
unteers. So he marches with the Chief to a 
great big plain on the top of a mountain, and 
the Chief's men rushes into a village and 
takes it ; we three Martinis firing into the 
brown of the enemy. So we took that village 
too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat 
and says, ' Occupy till I come : ' which was 
scriptural. By way of a reminder, when me 



124 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

and the Army was eighteen hundred yards 
away, I drops a bullet near him standing on 
the snow, and all the people falls flat on their 
faces. Then I sends a letter to Dravot, wher- 
ever he be by land or by sea." 

At the risk of throwing the creature out of 
train I interrupted, — "How could you write 
a letter up yonder .'* " 

" The letter ?— Oh !— The letter ! Keep 
looking at me between the eyes, please. It 
was a string-talk letter, that we'd learned the 
way of it from a blind begger in the Punjab." 

I remember that there had once come to 
the office a blind man with a knotted twig and 
a piece of string which he wound round the 
twig according to some cipher of his own. 
He could, after the lapse of days or hours, 
repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. 
He had reduced the alphabet to eleven prim- 
itive sounds ; and tried to teach me his method, 
but failed. 

" I sent that letter to Dravot," said Carne- 
han ; " and told him to come back because 
this Kingdom was growing too big for me to 
handle, and then I struck for the first valley, 
to see how the priests were working. They 
called the village we took along with the Chief, 
Bashkai, and the first village we took, Er-Heb. 
The priests at Er-Heb was doing all right, but 
they had a lot of pending cases about land to 
show me, and some men from another village 
had been firing arrows at night ; I went out and 
looked for that village and fired four rounds 



The Man Who Would be King 125 

at it from a thousand yards. That used all 
the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited 
for Dravot, who had been away two or three 
months, and I kept my people quiet. 

" One morning I heard the devil's own noise 
of drums and horns, and Dan Dravot marches 
down the hill with his Army and a tail of 
hundreds of men, and, which was the most 
amazing — a great gold crown on his head. 
' My Gord, Carnehan,' says Daniel, ' this is a 
tremenjus business, and we've got the whole 
country as far as it's worth having. I am the 
son of Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and 
you're my younger brother and a God too ! 
It's the biggest thing we've ever seen. I've 
been marching and fighting for six weeks with 
the Army, and every footy little village for 
fifty miles has come in rejoiceful ; and more 
than that, I've got the key of the whole show, 
as you'll see, and I've got a crown for you ! 
I told 'em to make two of 'em at a place called 
Shu, where the gold lies in the rock like suet 
in mutton. Gold I've seen, and turquoise I've 
kicked out of the cliffs, and there's garnets in 
the sands of the river, and here's a chunk of 
amber that a man brought me. Call up all 
the priests and, here, take your crown.' 

" One of the men opens a black hair bag, 
and I slips the crown on. It was too small and 
too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Ham- 
mered gold it was — five-pound weight, like a 
hoop of a barrel. 

" ' Peachey,' says Dravot, ' we don't want 



126 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

to fight no more. The Craft's the trick so 
help me!' and he brings forward, that same 
Chief that I left at Bashkai— Billy Fish we 
called him afterwards, because he was so like 
Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at 
Mach on the Bolan in the old days. * Shake 
hands with him,' says Dravot, and I shook 
hands and nearly dropped, for Billy Fish gave 
me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with 
the Fellow Craft Grip. He answers, all right, 
and I tried the Master's Grip, but that was a 
slip. ' A Fellow Crafts he is ! ' I says to Dan. 

* Does he know the world } ' ' He does,' says 
Dan, ^ and all the priests know. It's a mir- 
acle ! The Chiefs and the priests can work a 
Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that's very like 
ours, and they've cut the marks on the rocks, 
but they don't know the Third Degree, and 
they've come to find out. It's Gord's Truth. 
I've known these long years that the Afghans 
knew up to the Fellow Craft Degree, but this 
is a miracle. A God and a Grand-Master of 
the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third 
Degree I will open, and we'll raise the head 
priests and the Chiefs of the villages.' 

" ' It's against all the law,' I says, * holding 
a Lodge without warrant from any one ; and 
we never held office in any Lodge.' 
" * It's a master-stroke of policy,' says Dravot. 

* It means running the country as easy as a 
four-wheeled bogy on a down grade. We can't 
stop to inquire now, or they'll turn against us. 
I've forty Chiefs' at my heel, and passed and 



The Man Who Would be King 127 

raised according to their merit they shall be. 
Billet these men on the villages and see that 
we run up a Lodge of some kind. The temple 
of Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The 
women must make aprons as you show them. 
I'll hold a levee of Chiefs to-nisjht and Lodge 
to-morrow.' 

'' I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't 
such a fool as not to see what a pull this Craft 
business gave us. I showed the priests' 
■amilies how to make aprons of the degrees, 
but for Dravot's apron the blue border and 
marks was made of turquoise lumps on white 
hide, not cloth. We took a great square 
stone in the temple for the Master's chair, and 
little stones for the officers' chairs, and painted 
the black pavement with white squares, and 
did what we could to make things regular. 

" At the levee which was held that night on 
the hillside with big bonfires, Dravot gives 
out that him and me were Gods and sons of 
Alexander, and Past Grand-Masters in the 
Craft, and was come to make Kafiristan a 
country where every man should eat in peace 
and drink in quiet, and especially obey us. 
Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands, 
and they was so hairy and white and fair it 
was just shaking hands with old friends. We 
gave them names according as they was like 
men we had known in India — Billy Pish, 
Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan that was Bazar- 
master when I was at Mhow, and so on and 
so on. 



128 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

" The most amazing miracle was at Lodge 
next night. One of the old priests was 
watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for 
I knew we'd have to fudge the Ritual, and I 
didn't know what the men knew. The old 
priest was a stranger come in from beyond 
the village of Bashkai. The minute Dravot 
puts on the Master's apron that the girls had 
made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and 
a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that 
Dravot was sitting on. * It's all up now,' I 
says. ' That comes of meddling with the 
Craft without warrant ! ' Dravot never winked 
an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted 
over the Grand-Master's chair — which was to 
say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins 
rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away 
the black dirt, and presently he shows all the 
other priests the Master's Mark, same as was 
on Dravot's apron, cut into the stone. Not 
even the priests of the temple of Imbra knew 
it was there. The old chap falls flat on his 
face at Dravot's feet and kisses 'em. ' Luck 
again,' says Dravot, across the Lodge to me, 
' they say it's the missing Mark that no one 
could understand the why of. We're more 
than safe now.' Then he bangs the butt of 
his gun for a gavel and says : — ' By virtue of 
the authority vested in me by my own right 
hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself 
Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan 
in this the Mother Lodge o' the country, and 
King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey ! ' 



The Man Who Would be King 129 

At that he puts on his crown and I puts on 
mine — I was doing Senior Warden — and we 
opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was 
a amazing miracle ! The priests moved in 
Lodge through the first two degrees almost 
without telling, as if the memory was coming 
back to them. After that, Peachey and Dravot 
raised such as was worthy — high priests and 
Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the 
first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out 
of him. It was not in any way according to 
Ritual, but it served our turn. We didn't 
raise more than ten of the biggest men be- 
cause we didn't want to make the Degree 
common. x\nd they was clamoring to be 
raised. 

" ' In another six months,' says Dravot, 
' we'll hold another Communication and see 
how you are working.' Then he asks them 
about their villages, and learns that they was 
fighting one against the other and were fair 
sick and tired of it. And when they wasn't 
doing that they was fighting with the Moham- 
medans. ' You can fight those when they 
come into our country,' says Dravot. ' Tell 
off every tenth man of your tribes for a Fron- 
tier guard, and send two hundred at a time to 
this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going to 
be shot or speared any more so long as he 
does well, and I know that you won't cheat me 
because you're white people — sons of Alex- 
ander — and not like common, black Moham- 
medans. You are my people and by God,' 



130 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

says he, running off into English at the end — 
' I'll make a damned fine Nation of you, or 
I'll die in the making ! ' 

" I can't tell all we did for the next six 
months because Dravot did a lot I couldn't 
see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in 
a way I never could. My work was to help 
the people plow, and now and again go out 
with some of the Army and see what the other 
villages were doing, and make 'em throw rope- 
bridges across the ravines which cut up the 
country horrid. Dravot was very kind to me, 
but when he walked up and down in the pine 
wood pulling that bloody red beard of his with 
both fists I knew he was thinking plans I 
could not advise him about, and I just waited 
for orders. 

'^ But Dravot never showed me disrespect 
before the people. They were afraid of me 
and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was 
the best of friends with the priests and the 
Chiefs ; but any one could come across the 
hills with a complaint and Dravot would hear 
him out fair, and call four priests together and 
say what was to be done. He used to call in 
Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan 
from Shu, and an old Chief we called Kafuzelum 
— it was like enough to his real name — and 
hold councils with 'em when there was any 
fighting to be done in small villages. That 
was his Council of War, and the four priests 
of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Madora was 
his Privy Council. Between the lot of 'em 



The Man Who Would be King 131 

they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, 
and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the 
Ghorband country to buy those hand-made 
Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir's 
workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's 
Herati regiments that would have sold the 
very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises. 

" I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave 
the Governor there the pick of my baskets for 
hush-money, and bribed the Colonel of the 
regiment some more, and, between the two 
and the tribes-people, we got more than a 
hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good 
Kohat Jezails that'll throw to six hundred 
yards, and forty man-loads of very bad am- 
munition for the rifles. I came back with 
what I had, and distributed 'em among the 
men that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill. 
Dravot was too busy to attend to those things, 
but the old Army that we first made helped 
me, and we turned out five hundred men that 
could drill, and two hundred that knew how 
to hold arms pretty straight. Even those 
cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle 
to them. Dravot talked big about powder- 
shops and factories, walking up and down in 
the pine wood when the winter was coming 
on. 

" ' I won't make a Nation,' says he. ' I'll 
make an Empire ! These men aren't nig- 
gers ; they're English ! Look at their eyes 
— look at their mouths. Look at the way 
they stand up. They sit on chairs in their 



132 The Phantom 'Rickshaw- 
own houses. They're the Lost Tribes, or 
something like it, and they've grown to be 
English. I'll take a census in the spring if 
the priests don't get frightened. There 
must be a fair two million of 'em in these 
hills. The villages are full o' little children. 
Two million people — two hundred and fifty 
thousand fighting men — and all English ! 
They only want the rifles and a little drilling. 
Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready 
to cut in on Russia's right flank when she 
tries for India ! Peache}^, man,' he says, 
chewing his beard in great hunks, ' we shall 
be Emperors — Emperors of the Earth ! 
Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I'll 
treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. I'll 
ask him to send me twelve picked English 
— twelve that I know of — to help us govern 
a bit. There's IMackray, Sergeant-pensioner 
at Segowli — many's the good dinner he's 
given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. 
There's Donkin, the Warder of Tounghoo 
Jail ; there's hundreds that I could lay my 
hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy 
shall do it for me. I'll send a man through 
in the spring for those men^ and TU write for 
a dispensation from the Grand Lodge for 
what I've done as Grand-Master. That — and 
all the Sniders that'll be thrown out when the 
native troops in India take up the Martini. 
They'll be worn smooth, but they'll do for 
fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a 
hundred thousand Sniders run through the 



The Man Who Would be King 133 

Amir's country in driblets — I'd be content 
with twenty thousand in one year — and we'd 
be an Empire. When everything was ship- 
shape, I'd hand over the crown — this crown 
I'm wearing now — to Queen Victoria on my 
knees, and she'd say : — " Rise up, Sir Daniel 
Dravot." Oh, it's big ! It's big, I tell you ! 
But there's so much to be done in every place 
— Bashkai, Khawk, Shu, and everywhere else.' 

" ' What is it ? ' I says. ' There are no 
more men coming in to be drilled this autumn. 
Look at those fat, black clouds. They're 
bringing the snow^' 

" ' It isn't that,' says Daniel, putting his 
hand very hard on my shoulder ; ' and I don't 
wish to say anything that's against you, for 
no ^ther living man would have followed me 
and made me what I am as you have done. 
You're a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and 
the people know you ; but — it's a big country, 
and somehow you can't help me, Peachey, in 
the way I want to be helped.' 

" ' Go to your blasted priests, then ! ' I 
said, and I was sorry when I made that re- 
mark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel 
talking so superior when I'd drilled all the 
men, and done all he told me. 

" ' Don't let's quarrel, Peachey,^ says Daniel 
without cursing. ' You're a King too, and 
the half of this Kingdom is yours ; but can't 
you see, Peachey, we want cleverer men than 
us now — three or four of 'em that we can 
scatter about for our Deputies. It's a huge- 



134 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

ous great State, and I can't always tell the 
right thing to do, and I haven't time for all 
I want to do, and here's the winter coming on 
and all.' He put half his beard into his 
mouth, and it was as red as the gold of his 
crown. 

'**I'm sorry Daniel,' says I. 'I've done 
all I could. I've drilled the men and shown 
the people how to stack their oats better ; 
and I've brought in those tinware rifles from 
Ghorband — but I know what you're driving 
at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed 
that way.' 

" ' There's another thing too,' says Dravot, 
walking up and down. ' The winter's coming 
and these people won't be giving much 
trouble, and if they do we can't move about. 
I want a wife.' 

" ' For Gord's sake leave the women alone ! ' 
I says. ' We've both got all the work we can, 
though I am a fool. Remember the Contrack, 
and keep clear o' women.' 

" 'The Contrack only lasted till such time 
as we was Kings ; and Kings we have been 
these months past,' says Dravot, weighing his 
crown in his hand. ' You go get a wife too, 
Peachey — a nice, strappin', plump girl that'll 
keep you warm in the winter. They're pret- 
tier than English girls, and we can take the pick 
of 'em. Boil 'em once or twic^ in hot water, 
and they'll come as fair as chicken and ham.' 

" ' Don't tempt me ! ' I says. * I will not 
have any dealings with a woman not till we are 



The Man Who Would be King 135 

a dam' side more settled than we are now. I've 
been doing the work o' two men, and you've 
been doing the work o' three. Let's lie off a 
bit, and see if we can get some better tobacco 
from Afghan country and run in some good 
liquor; but no women.' 

" ' Who's talking o' women ? ' says Dravot, 
' I said wife — a Queen to breed a King's son 
for the King. A Queen out of the strongest 
tribe, that'll make them your blood-brothers, 
and that'll lie by your side and tell you all the 
people thinks about you and their own affairs. 
That's what I want.' 

" ' Do you remember that Bengali woman I 
kept at Mogul Serai when I was a plate-layer ? ' 
says I. ' A fat lot o' good she was to me. 
She taught me the lingo and one or two 
other things ; but what happened } She ran 
away with the Station Master's servant and 
half my month's pay. Then she turned up at 
Dadur Junction in tow of a half-caste, and had 
the impidence to say I was her husband — all 
among the drivers in the running shed ! ' 

" ' We've done with that,' says Dravot. 
* These women are whiter than you or me, 
and a Queen I will have for the winter months.' 

" ' For the last time o' asking, Dan, do not,' I 
say. 'It'll only bring us harm. The Bible 
says that Kings ain't to waste their strength 
on women, 'specially when they've got a new 
raw Kingdom to work over.' 

" * For the last time of answering I will,' 
said Dravot, and he went away through the 



136 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

pine-trees looking like a big red devil. The 
low sun hit his crown and beard on one side 
and the two blazed like hot coals. 

" But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan 
thought. He put it before the Council, and 
there was no answer till Billy Fish said that 
he'd better ask the girls. Dravot damned 
them all round. ' What's wrong with me ? ' 
he shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. ' Am 
I a dog or am I not enough of a man for your 
wenches ? Haven't I put the shadow of my 
hand over this country ? Who stopped the 
last Afghan raid .'' ' It was me really, but 
Dravot was too angry to remember. ' Who 
bought your guns ? Who repaired the bridges ? 
Who's the Grand-Master of the sign cut in the 
stone?' and he thumped his hand on the 
block that he used to sit on in Lodge, and at 
Council, which opened like Lodge always. 
Billy Fish said nothing and no more did the 
others. ' Keep your hair on, Dan,' said I; 
' and ask the girls. That's how it's done at 
Home, and these people are quite English.^ 

'" ' The marriage of the King is a matter of 
State,' says Dan, in a white-hot rage, for he 
could feel, I hope, that he was going against 
his better mind. He walked out of the Coun- 
cil-room, and the others sat still, looking at 
the ground. 

" ' Billy Fish,' says I to the Chief of Bash- 
kai, ' what's the difficulty here ? A straight 
answer to a true friend.' 'You know,' says 
Billy Fish. ' How should a man tell you 



The Man Who Would be King 137 

who know everything? How can daughters 
of men marry Gods or Devils ? It's not proper. ' 

" I remembered something like that in the 
Bible ; but if, after seeing us as long as they 
had, they still believed we were Gods, it wasn't 
for me to undeceive them. 

" ' A God can do anything,' says I. ' If 
the King is fond of a girl he'll not let her 
die. ' ' She'll have to,' said Billy Fish. 
" There are all sorts of Gods and Devils in 
these mountains, and now and again a girl 
marries one of them and isn't seen any more. 
Besides, you two know the Mark cut in the 
stone. Only the Gods know that. We 
thought you were men till you showed the 
sign of the Master.' 

" I wished then that we had explained about 
the loss of the genuine secrets of a Master- 
Mason at the first go-off ; but I said nothing. 
All that night there was a blowing of horns in 
a little dark temple half-way down the hill, 
and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of 
the priests told us that she was being prepared 
to marry the King. 

" * I'll have no nonsense of that kind,' says 
Dan. ' I don't want to interfere with your 
customs, but I'll take my own wife.' ' The 
girl's a little bit afraid,' says the priest. ' She 
thinks she's going to die, and they are a-heart- 
ening of her up down in the temple.' 

" ' Hearten her very tender, then,' says 
Dravot, ' or I'll hearten you with the butt of a 
gun so that you^U never want to be heartened 



138 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

again.' He licked Iiis lips, did Dan, and 
stayed up walking about more than half the 
night, thinking of the wife that he was going 
to get in the morning. I wasn't any means 
comfortable, for I knew that dealings with a 
woman in foreign parts, though you was a 
crowned King twenty times over, could not 
but be risky. I got up very early in the morn- 
ing while Dravot was asleep, and I saw the 
priests talking together in whispers, and the 
Chiefs talking together too, and they looked 
at me out of the corners of their eyes. 

" ' What is up, Fish .? ' I says to the Bashkai 
man, who was wrapped up in his furs and 
looking splendid to behold. 

" ' I can't rightly say,' says he ; ' but if you 
can induce the King to drop all this nonsense 
about marriage, you'll be doing him and me 
and yourself a great service.' 

" ' That I do believe,' says I. * But sure, 
you know Billy, as well as me, having fought 
against and for us, that the King and me are 
nothing more than two of the finest men that 
God Almighty ever made. Nothing more, I 
do assure you.' 

" ' That may be,' says Billy Fish, ' and yet 
1 should be sorry if it was.' He sinks his 
head upon his great fur cloak for a minute 
and thinks. ' King,' says he, ' be you man 
or God or Devil, Fll stick by you to-day. I 
have twenty of my men with me, and they 
will follow me. We'll go to Bashkai until the 
storm blows over.' 



The Man Who Would be King 139 

*' A little snow had fallen in the night, and 
everyUiing was white except the greasy fat 
clouds that blew down and down from the 
north. Dravot came out with his crown on 
his head, swinging his arms and stamping 
his feet, and looking more pleased than 
Punch. 

" ' For the last time, drop it, Dan,' says I 
in a whisper. ' Billy Fish here says that 
there Avill be a row.' 

" ' A row among my people ! ' says Dravot. 
' Not much. Peachey, you're a fool not to get 
a wife too. Where's the girl ? ' says he with 
a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. 
' Call up all the Chiefs and priests and let the 
Emperor see if his wife suits him.' 

" There was no need to call any one. 
They were all there leaning on their guns and 
spears round the clearing in the center of the 
pine wood. A deputation of priests went down 
to the little temple to bring up the girl, and 
the horns blew up fit to wake the dead. 
Billy Fish saunters round and gets as close 
to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood 
his twenty men with matchlocks. Not a man 
of them under six feet. I was next to Dravot, 
and behind me was twenty men of the regular 
Army. Up comes the girl, and a strapping 
wench she was, covered with silver and tur- 
quoises, but white as death, and looking back 
every minute at the priests. 

" ' She'll do,' said Dan, looking her over. 
* What's to be afraid of, lass? Come and 



140 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

kiss me.' He puts his arm round her. She 
shuts her eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and 
down goes her face in the side of Dan's flam- 
ing red beard. 

" ' The slut's bitten me ! ' says he, clapping 
his hand to his neck, and, sure, enough, his 
hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and 
two of his matchlock-men catches hold of Dan 
by the shoulders and drags him into the Bash- 
kai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo, 
— ' Neither God nor Devil but a man ! ' I 
was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in 
front, and the Army behind began firing into 
the Bashkai men. 

" ' God A-mighty ! ' says Dan. ' What is 
the meaning o' this } ' 

" ' Come back ! Come away ! ' says Billy 
Fish. ' Ruin and Mutiny is the matter. 
We'll break for Bashkai if we can.' 

" I tried to give some sort of orders to my 
men — the men o' the regular Army — but it 
was no use, so I fired into the brown of 'em 
with an English Martini and drilled three beg- 
gars in a line. The valley was full of shout- 
ing, howling creatures, and every soul was 
shrieking ' Not a God nor a Devil but only a 
man ! ' The Bashkai troops stuck to Billy 
Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks 
wasn't half as good as the Kabul breech- 
loaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was 
bellowing like a bull, for he was very wrathy ; 
and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent 
him running out at the crowd. 



The Man Who Would be King 141 

" ' We can't stand/ says Billy Fish. * Make 
a run for it down the valley ! The whole 
place is against us.' The matchlock-men 
ran, and we went down the valley in spite of 
Dravot's protestations. He was swearing 
horribly and crying out that he was a King. 
The priests rolled great stones on us, and the 
regular Army fired hard, and there wasn't 
more than six men, not counting Dan, Billy 
Fish, and Me, that came down to the bottom 
of the valley alive. 

" Then they stopped firing and the horns 
in the temple blew again. ' Come away — for 
Gord's sake come away ! ' says Billy Fish. 
' They'll send runners out to all the villages 
before ever we get to Bashkai. I can protect 
you there, but 1 can't do anything now.' 

" My own notion is that Dan began to go 
mad in his head from that hour. He stared 
up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was 
all for walking back alone and killing the 
priests with his bare hands ; which he could 
have done. ' An Emperor am I,' says 
Daniel, ' and next year I shall be a Knight of 
the Queen.' 

"'AH right, Dan,' says I; 'but come 
along now while there's time.' 

" ' It's your fault,' says he, ' for not looking 
after your Army better. There was mutiny 
in the midst, and you didn't know — you 
damned engine-driving, plate-laying, mission- 
ary's pass-hunting hound ! ' He sat upon a 
rock and called me every foul name he could 



142 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

lay tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care 
though it was all his foolishness that brought 
the smash. 

" ' I'm sorry, Dan,' says I, ' but there's no 
accounting for natives. This business is our 
Fifty-Seven. Maybe we'll make something 
out of it yet, when we've got to Bashkai.' 

" ' Let's get to Bashkai, then,' says Dan, 
' and, by God, when I come back here again 
I'll sweep the valley so there isn't a bug in a 
blanket left ! ' 

" We walked all that day, and all that night 
Dan was stumping up and down on the snow, 
chewing his beard and muttering to himself. 

" ' There's no hope o' getting clear,' said 
Billy Fish. ' The priests will have sent run- 
ners to the villages to say that you are only 
men. Why didn't you stick on as Gods till 
things was more settled? I'm a dead man,' 
says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down 
on the snow and begins to pray to his Gods. 

" Next morning we was in a cruel bad coun- 
try — all up and down, no level ground at all, 
and no food either. The six Bashkai men 
looked at Billy Fish hungry-wise as if they 
wanted to ask something, but they said never 
a word. At noon we came to the top of a flat 
mountain all covered with snow, and when we 
climbed up into it, behold, there was an Army 
in position waiting in the middle ! 

*' ' The runners have been very quick,' says 
Billy Fish, with a little bit of a laugh. ' They 
are waiting for us.' 



The Man Who Would be King 143 

" Three or four men began to fire from the 
enemy's side, and a chance shot took Daniel 
in the calf of the leg. That brought him to 
his senses. He looks across the snow at the 
Army, and sees the rifles that we had brought 
into the country. 

" ' We're done for/ says he. ' They are 
Englishmen, these people, — and it's my 
blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. 
Get back, Billy Fish, and take your men 
away ; you've done what you could, and now 
cut for it. Carnehan,' says he, ' shake hands 
with me and go along with Billy. Maybe 
they won't kill you. I'll go and meet 'em 
alone. It's me that did it. Me, the King ! ' 

'" Go ! ' says I. ' Go to Hell, Dan ! I'm 
with you here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and 
we two will meet those folk.' 

" ' I'm a Chief,' says Billy Fish, quite quiet. 
' I stay with you. My men can go.' 

" The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a 
second word but ran off, and Dan and Me 
and Billy Fish walked across to where the 
drums were drumming and the horns were 
horning. It was cold — awful cold. I've got 
that cold in the back of my head now. There's 
a lump of it there." 

The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. 
Two kerosene lamps were blazing in the 
of^ce, and the perspiration poured down my 
face and splashed on the blotter as I leaned 
forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I 
feared that his mind might go. I wiped my 



144 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

face, took a fresh grip of the piteously man- 
gled hands, and said : — " What happened 
after that ? " 

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken 
the clear current. 

" What was you pleased to say ? " whined 
Carnehan. " They took them without any 
sound. Not a little whisper all along the 
snow, not though the King knocked down 
the first man that set hand on him — not though 
old Peachey fired his last cartridge into the 
brown of 'em. Not a single solitary sound 
did those swines make. They just closed up 
tight, and I tell you their furs stunk. There 
was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of 
us all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and 
there, like a pig ; and the King kicks up the 
bloody snow and says : — 'We've had a dashed 
fine run for our money. What's coming 
next ? ' But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I 
tell you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two 
friends, he lost his head. Sir. No, he didn't 
neither. The King lost his head, so he did, 
all along o'one of those cunning rope-bridges. 
Kindly let me have the paper-cutter, Sir. It 
tilted this way. They marched him a mile 
across that snow to a rope-bridge over a ravine 
with a river at the bottom. You may have 
seen such. They prodded him behind like 
an ox. ' Damn your eyes ! ' says the King. 
* D'you suppose I can^t die like a gentleman ? ' 
He turns to Peachey — Peachey that was cry- 
ing like a child. ' I've brought you to this, 



The Man Who Would be King 145 

Peachey,' says he. ' Brought you out of your 
happy life to be killed in Kafiristan, where 
you was late Commander-in-Chief of the Em- 
peror's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.' 
' I do,' says Peachey. '■ Fully and freely do 
I forgive you, Dan.' ' Shake hands, Peachey,' 
says he. * I'm going now. ' Out he goes, 
looking neither right nor left, and when he 
was plumb in the middle of those dizzy danc- 
ing ropes, ' Cut, you beggars,' he shouts ; and 
they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and 
round and round, twenty thousand miles, for 
he took half an hour to fall till he struck the 
water, and I could see his body caught on a 
rock with the gold crown close beside. 

" But do you know what they did to Peachey 
between two pine trees ? They crucified him, 
Sir, as Peachey's hands will show. They used 
wooden pegs for his hands and his feet ; and 
he didn't die. He hung there and screamed, 
and they took him down next day, and said 
it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. They 
took him down — poor old Peachey that hadn't 
done them any harm — that hadn't done them 
any . . . " 

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, 
wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred 
hands and moaning like a child for some ten 
minutes. 

" They was cruel enough to feed him up in 

the temple, because they said he was more of 

a God than old Daniel that was a man. Then 

they turned him out on the snow, and told 

10 



146 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 

him to go home, and Peachey came home in 
about a year, begging along the roads quite 
safe ; for Daniel Dravot he walked before 
and said: — 'Come along, Peachey. It's a 
big thing we're doing.' The mountains they 
danced at night, and the mountains they tried 
to fall on Peachey's head, but Dan he held 
up his hand, and Peachey came along bent 
double. He never let go of Dan's hand, and 
he never let go of Dan's head. They gave it 
to him as a present in the temple, to remind 
him not to come again, and though the crown 
was pure gold, and Peachey was starving, 
never would Peachey sell the same. You 
knew Dravot, Sir ! You knew Right Worship- 
ful Brother Dravot ! Look at him now ! " 

He fumbled in the mass of rags round his 
bent waist ; brought out a black horsehair 
bag embroidered with silver thread ; and 
shook therefrom on to my table — the dried, 
withered head of Daniel Dravot ! The morn- 
ing sun that had long been paling the lamps 
struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes ; 
struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded 
with raw turquoises, that Carnehan placed 
tenderly on the battered temples. 

" You behold now," said Carnehan, " the 
Emperor in his habit as he lived — the King 
of Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. 
Poor old Daniel that ^vas a monarch once ! " 

I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements 
manifold, I recognized the head of the man 
of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. 



The Man Who Would be King 147 

I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to 
walk abroad. " Let me take away the 
whisky, and give me a little money," he 
gasped. " I was a King once. I'll go to the 
Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the 
Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank 
you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. 
I've urgent private affairs — in the south — at 
Marwar. " 

He shambled out of the office and departed 
in the direction of the Deputy Commissioner's 
house. That day at noon I had occasion to 
go down the blinding hot Mall, and I saw a 
crooked man crawling along the white dust of 
the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering 
dolorously after the fashion of street-singers 
at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and 
he was out of all possible earshot of the 
houses. And he sang through his nose, turn- 
ing his head from right to left : — 

*' The Son of Man goes forth to war, 
A golden crown to gain ; 
His blood-red banner streams afar — 
Who follows in his train ? " 

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor 
wretch into my carriage and drove him off to 
the nearest missionary for eventual transfer 
to the Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice 
while he was with me whom he did not in the 
least recognize, and I left him singing it to 
the missionary. 

Two days later I inquired after his welfare 
of the Superintendent of the Asylum. 



148 The Phantom 'Rickshaw 



"He was admitted suffering from sun- 
stroke. He died early yesterday morning," 
said the Superintendent. " Is it true that he 
was half an hour bareheaded in the sun at 
midday ? " 

"Yes," said I, "but do you happen to 
know if he had anything upon him by any 
chance when he died ? " 

"Not to my knowledge," said the Superin- 
tendent. 

And there the matter rests. 



CITY OF THE DREADFUL NIGHT, 



CHAPTER I. 

A REAL LIVE CITY. 

We are all backwoodsmen and barbarians 
together — we others dwelling beyond the 
Ditch, in the outer darkness of the Mofussil. 
There are no such things as commissioners 
and heads of departments in the world, and 
there is only one city in India. Bombay is too 
green, too pretty and too stragglesome ; and 
Madras died ever so long ago. Let us take 
off our hats to Calcutta, the many-sided, the 
smoky, the magnificent, as we drive in over 
the Hugh Bridge in the dawn of a still Feb- 
ruary morning. We have left India behind 
us at Howrah Station, and now we enter for- 
eign parts. No, not wholly foreign. Say 
rather too familiar. 

All men of certain age know the feeling of 
caged irritation — an illustration in the Graphic, 
a bar of music of the light words of a friend 
from home may set it ablaze — that comes from 
the knowledge of our lost heritage of London. 



2 City of the Dreadful Night 

At home they, the other men, our equals, have 
at their disposal all that town can supply — 
the roar of the streets, the lights, the music, 
the pleasant places, the millions of their own 
kind, and a wilderness full of pretty, fresh- 
colored English-women, theaters and restau- 
rants. It is their right. They accept it as 
such, and even affect to look upon it with con- 
tempt. And we, we have nothing except the 
few amusements that we painfully build up 
for ourselves — the dolorous dissipations of 
gymkhanas where every one knows everybody 
else, or the chastened intoxication of dances 
where all engagements are booked, in ink, ten 
days ^head, and where everybody's antece- 
dents are as patent as his or her method of 
waltzing. We have been deprived of our in- 
heritance. The men at home are enjoying it 
all, not knowing how fair and rich it is, and 
we at the most can only fly westward for a few 
months and gorge what, properly speaking, 
should take seven or eight or ten luxurious 
years. That is the lost heritage of London ; 
and the knowledge of the forfeiture, wilful or 
forced, comes to most men at times and sea- 
sons, and they get cross. 

Calcutta holds out false hopes of some re- 
turn. The dense smoke hangs low, in the 
chill of the morning, over an ocean of roofs, 
and, as the city wakes, there goes up to the 
smoke a deep, full-throated boom of life and 
motion and humanity. For this reason does 
he who sees Calcutta for the first time hang 



City of the Dreadful Night 3 

joyously out of the ticca-gharri and sniff the 
smoke, and turn his face toward the tumult, 
saying : " This is, at last, some portion of my 
heritage returned to me. This is a city. 
There is life here, and there should be all 
manner of pleasant things for the having, 
across the river and under the smoke." When 
Leland, he who wrote the Hans Ereitmann 
Ballads, once desired to know the name of an 
austere, plug-hatted red-skin of repute, his 
answer, from the lips of a half-breed, was : 

" He Injun. He big Injun. He heap big 
Injun. He dam big heap Injun. He dam 
mighty great big heap Injun. He Jones!" 
The litany is an expressive one, and exactly 
describes the first emotions of a wandering 
savage adrift in Calcutta. The eye has lost 
its sense of proportion, the focus has con- 
tracted through overmuch residence in up- 
country stations — twenty minutes' canter from 
hospital to parade-ground, you know — and the 
mind has shrunk with the eye. Both say to- 
gether, as they take in the sweep of shipping 
above and below the Hugli Bridge : " Why, 
this is London ! This is the docks. This is 
Imperial. This is worth coming across India 
to see ! " 

Then a distinctly wicked idea takes posses- 
sion of the mind : " What a divine — what a 
heavenly place to loot!'' This gives place to 
a much worse devil — that of Conservatism. It 
seems not only a WTong but a criminal thing 
to allow natives to have any voice in the con- 



4 City of the Dreadful Night 

trol of such a city — adorned, docked, wharfed, 
fronted and reclaimed by Englishmen, exist- 
ing only because England lives, and depen- 
dent for its life on England. All India knows 
of the Calcutta Municipality ; but has any 
one thoroughly investigated the Big Calcutta 
Stink! There is only one. Benares is fouler 
in point of concentrated, pent-up muck, and 
there are local stenches in Peshawur which are 
stronger than the B. C. S. ; but, for diffused, 
soul-sickening expansiveness, the reek of Cal- 
cutta beats both Benares and Peshawur. 
Bombay cloaks her stenches with a veneer of 
assafoetida and huq a-tohdicco ; Calcutta is 
above pretense. There is no tracing back the 
Calcutta plague to any one source. It is faint, 
it is sickly, and it is indescribable ; but 
Americans at the Great Eastern Hotel say 
that it is something like the smell of the 
Chinese quarter in San Francisco. It is cer- 
tainly not an Indian smell. It resembles the 
essence of corruption that has rotted for the 
second time — the clammy odor of blue slime. 
And there is no escape from it. It blows 
across the maidan; it comes in gusts into the 
corridors of the Great Eastern Hotel ; what 
they are pleased to call the " Palaces of Chou- 
ringhi " carry it ; it swirls round the Bengal 
Club ; it pours out of by-streets with sicken- 
ing intensity, and the breeze of the morning 
is laden with it. It is first found, in spite of 
the fume of the engines, in Howrah Station. 
It seems to be worst in the little lanes at the 



City of the Dreadful Night 5 

back of Lai Bazar where the drinking-shops 
are, but it is nearly as bad opposite Govern- 
ment House and in the Public Offices. The 
thing is intermittent. Six moderately pure 
mouthfuls of air may be drawn without offense. 
Then comes the seventh wave and the queasi- 
ness of an uncultured stomach. If you live 
long enough in Calcutta you grow used to it. 
The regular residents admit the disgrace, but 
their answer is : " Wait till the wind blows off 
the Salt Lakes where all the sewage goes, and 
then youll smell something." That is their 
defense ! Small wonder that they consider 
Calcutta is a fit place for a permanent Viceroy. 
Englishmen who can calmly extenuate one 
shame by another are capable of asking for 
anything — and expecting to get it. 

If an up-country station holding three 
thousand troops and twenty civilians owned 
such a possession as Calcutta does, the Dep- 
uty Commissioner or the Cantonment Magis- 
trate would have all the natives off the board 
of management or decently shoveled into the 
background until the mess was abated. Then 
they might come on again and talk of " high- 
handed oppression " as much as they liked. 
That stink, to an unprejudiced nose, damns 
Calcutta as a City of Kings. And, in spite 
of that stink, they allow, they even encourage, 
natives to look after the place ! The damp, 
drainage-soaked soil is sick with teeming 
life of a hundred years, and the Municipal 
Board list is choked with the names of 



6 City of the Dreadful Night 

natives — men of the breed born in and raised 
off this surfeited muck-heap ! They own prop- 
erty, these amiable Aryans on the Municipal 
and the Bengal Legislative Council. Launch 
a proposal to tax them on that property, and 
they naturally howl. They also howl up- 
country, but there the halls for mass-meetings 
are few, and the vernacular papers fewer, 
and with a ziibbar dusti Secretary and a Presi- 
dent whose favor is worth the having and 
whose wrath is undesirable, men are kept 
clean despite themselves, and may not poison 
their neighbors. Why, asks a savage, let 
them vote at all .? They can put up with this 
filthiness. They cannot have any feelings 
worth caring a rush for. Let them live 
quietly and hide away their money under our 
protection, while we tax them till they know 
through their purses the measure of their neg- 
lect in the past, and when a little of the smell 
has been abolished, bring them back again to 
talk and take the credit of enlightenment. 
The better classes own their broughams and 
barouches ; the worse can shoulder an 
Englishman into the kennel and talk to him 
as though he were a khitmatgai-. They can 
refer to an English lady as ?cciaurat; they are 
permitted a freedom — not to put it too coarsely 
— of speech which, if used by an Englishman 
toward an Englishman, would end in serious 
trouble. They are fenced and protected and 
made inviolate. Surely they might be con- 
tent with all those things without entering into 



City of the Dreadful Night 7 

matters which they cannot, by the nature of 
their birth, understand. 

Now, whether all this genial diatribe be the 
outcome of an unbiased mind or the result 
first of sickness caused by that ferocious 
stench, and secondly of headache due to day- 
long smoking to drown the stench, is an open 
question. Anyway, Calcutta is a fearsome 
place for a man not educated up to it. 

A word of advice to other barbarians. Do 
not bring a north-country servant into Cal- 
cutta. He is sure to get into trouble, because 
he does not understand the customs of the 
city. A Punjabi in this place for the first 
time esteems it his bounden duty to go to the 
Ajaib-ghar — the Museum. Such an one has 
gone and is even now returned very angry 
and troubled in the spirit. " I went to the 
Museum," says he, " and no one gave me any 
gali. I went to the market to buy my food, 
and then I sat upon a seat. There came a 
chaprissi who said : ' Go away, I want to sit 
here.' I said : *I am here first.' He said : 
'I am chaprissi ! nikal jao !^ and hit he me. 
Now that sitting-place was open to all, so I 
hit him till he wept. He ran away for the 
Police, and I went away too, for the Police 
here are all Sahibs. Can I have leave from 
two o'clock to go and look for that chapiHssi 
and hit him again ? " 

Behold the situation ! An unknown city 
full of smell that makes one long for rest and 
retirement, and a champing naukar^ not yet 



8 City of the Dreadful Night 

six hours in the stew, who has started a blood- 
feud with an unknown cliaprissi and clamors 
to go forth to the fray. General orders that, 
whatever may be said or done to him, he must 
not say or do anyting in return lead to an elo- 
quent harangue on the quality of izzat and the 
nature of "face blackening." There is no 
izzat in Calcutta, and this Awful Smell black- 
ens the face of any Englishman who sniffs it. 

Alas ! for the lost delusion of the heritage 
that was to be restored. Let us sleep,.let us 
sleep, and pray that Calcutta may be better 
to-morrow. 

At present it is remarkably like sleeping 
with a corpse. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE REFLECTIONS OF A SAVAGE. 

Morning brings counsel. Docs Calcutta 
smell so pestiferously after all } Heavy rain 
has fallen in the night. She is newly-washed, 
and the clear sunlight shows her at her best. 
Where, oh where, in all this wilderness of life 
shall a man go ? Newman and Co. publish a 
three-rupee guide which produces first despair 
and then fear in the mind of the reader. Let 
us drop Newman and Co. out of the topmost 
window of the Great Eastern, trusting to luck 



City of the Dreadful Night 9 

and the flight of the hours to evolve wonders 
and mysteries and amusements. 

The Great Eastern hums with life through 
all its hundred rooms. Doors slam merrily, 
and all the nations of the earth run up and 
down the staircases. This alone is refreshing, 
because the passers bump you and ask you to 
stand aside. Fancy finding anyplace outside 
a Levee-room where Englishmen are crowded 
together to this extent ! Fancy sitting down 
seventy strong to table cfhote and with a 
deafening clatter of knives and forks ! Fancy 
finding a real bar whence drinks may be ob- 
tained ! and, joy of joys, fancy stepping out 
of the hotel into the arms of a live, white, 
helmeted, buttoned, truncheoned Bobby ! A 
beautiful, burly Bobby — just the sort of man 
who, seven thousand miles away, staves off 
the stuttering witticism of the three-o'clock- 
in-the-morning reveler by the strong badged 
arm of authority. What would happen if one 
spoke to this Bobby .'* Would he be offended ? 
He is not offended. He is affable. He has 
to patrol the pavement in front of the Great 
Eastern and to see that the crowding ticca- 
gharris do not jam. Toward a presumably 
respectable white he behaves as a man and a 
brother. There is no arrogance about him. 
And this is disappointing. Closer inspection 
shows that he is not a real Bobby after all. 
He is a Municipal Police something and his 
uniform is not correct ; at least if they have 
not changed the dress of the men at home. 



10 City of the Dreadful Night 

But no matter. Later on we will inquire into 
the Calcutta Bobby, because he is a white 
man, and has to deal with some of the " tough- 
est " folk that ever set out of malice afore- 
thought to paint Job Charnock's city vermil- 
ion. You must not, you cannot cross Old 
Court House Street without looking carefully 
to see that you stand no chance of being run 
over. This is beautiful. There is a steady 
roar of traffic, cut every two minutes by the 
deeper roll of the trams. The driving is 
eccentric, not to say bad, but there is the 
traffic — more than unsophisticated eyes have 
beheld for a certain number of years. It 
means business, it means money-making, it 
means crowded and hurrying life, and it gets 
into the blood and makes it move. Here be 
big shops with plate-glass fronts — all display- 
ing the well-known names of firms that we 
savages only correspond with through the 
V. P. P. and Parcels Post. They are all 
here, as large as life, ready to supply any- 
thing you need if you only care to sign. 
Great is the fascination of being able to 
obtain a thing on the spot without having 
to write for a week and wait for a month, 
and then get something quite different. No 
wonder pretty ladies, who live anywhere with- 
in a reasonable distance, come down to do 
their shopping personally. 

" Look here. If you want to be respectable 
you mustn't smoke in the streets. Nobody 
does it." This is advice kindly tendered by a 



City of the Dreadful Night ii 

friend in a black coat. There is no Levee or 
Lieutenant-Governor in sight ; but he wears 
the frock-coat because it is daylight, and he 
can be seen. He also refrains from smoking 
for the same reason. He admits that Provi- 
dence built the open air to be smoked in, but 
he says that " it isn't the thing. " This man 
has a brougham, a remarkably natty little pill- 
box with a curious wabble about the wheels. 
He steps into the brougham and puts on — a 
top hat, a shiny black " plug." 

There was a man up-country once who 
owned a top-hat. He leased it to amateur 
theatrical companies for some seasons until 
the nap wore off. Then he threw it into a 
tree and wild bees hived in it. Men were 
wont to come and look at the hat, in its palmy 
days, for the sake of feeling homesick. It in- 
terested all the station, and died with two 
seers of babul flower honey in its bosom. But 
top-hats are not intended to be worn in India. 
They are as sacred as home letters and old 
rosebuds. The friend cannot see this. He 
allows that if he stepped out of his brougham 
and walked about in the sunshine for ten 
minutes he would get a bad headache. In 
half an hour he would probably catch sun- 
stroke. He allows all this, but he keeps to 
his hat and cannot see why a barbarian is 
moved to inextinguishable laughter at the 
sight. Every one who owns a brougham and 
many people who hire ticca-gharris keep top- 
hats and black frock-coats. The effect is 



12 City of the Dreadful Night 

curious, and at first fills the beholder with 
surprise. 

And now, " let us see the handsome houses 
where the wealthy nobles dwell." Northerly 
lies the great human jungle of the native city, 
stretching from Burra Bazar to Chitpore. 
That can keep. Southerly is the maidan and 
Chouringhi. " If you get out into the center 
of the maidan you will understand why Cal- 
cutta is called the City of Palaces." The 
traveled American said so at the Great 
Eastern. There is a short tower, falsely 
called a " memorial," standing in a waste of 
soft, sour green. That is as good a place to 
get to as any other. Near here the newly- 
landed waler is taught the whole duty of the 
trap-horse and careers madly in a brake. 
Near here young Calcutta gets upon a horse 
and is incontinently run away with. Near 
here hundreds of kine feed, close to the 
innumerable trams and the whirl of traffic 
along the face of Chouringhi Road. The 
size of the maidan takes the heart out of 
any one accustomed to the "gardens" of up- 
country, just as they say Newmarket Heath 
cows a horse accustomed to more shut-in 
course. The huge level is studded with 
brazen statues of eminent gentlemen riding 
fretful horses on diabolically severe curbs. 
The expanse dwarfs the statues, dwarfs every- 
thing except the frontage of the far-away 
Chouringhi Road. It is big — it is impressive. 
There is no escaping the fact. They built 



City of the Dreadful Night 13 

houses in the old days when the rupee was 
two shillings and a penny. Those houses are 
three-storied, and ornamented with service- 
staircases Uke houses in the Hills. They are 
also very close together, and they own garden 
walls of pukka-vc\ci?>ouxy pierced with a single 
gate. In their shut-upness they are British. 
In their spaciousness they are Oriental, but 
those service-staircases do not look healthy. 
We will form an amateur sanitary commission 
and call upon Chouringhi. 

A first introduction to the Calcutta dm-ivan 
is not nice. If he is chewing/^;?, he does 
not take the trouble to get rid of his quid. 
If he is sitting on his chai-poy chewing sugar- 
cane, he does not think it worth his while to 
rise. He has to be taught those things, and 
he cannot understand why he should be re- 
proved. Clearly he is a survival of a played- 
out system. Providence never intended that 
any native should be made a concierge more 
insolent than any of the French variety. The 
people of Calcutta put an Uria in a little lodge 
close to the gate of their house, in order that 
loafers may be turned away, and the houses 
protected from theft. The natural result is 
that the durwaii treats everybody whom he 
does not know as a loafer, has an intimate 
and vendible knowledge of all the outgoings 
and incomings in that house, and controls, to 
a large extent, the nomination of the naukar- 
log. They say that one of the estimable class 
is now suing a bank for about three lakhs of 



14 City of the Dreadful Night 

rupees. Up-country, a Lieutenant-Governor's 
chaprissi has to work for thirty years before 
he can retire on seventy thousand rupees of 
savings. The Calcutta durwan is a great in- 
stitution. The head and front of his offense 
is that he will insist upon trying to talk En- 
glish. How he protects the houses Calcutta 
only knows. H^ can be frightened out of his 
wits by severe speech, and is generally asleep 
in calling hours. If a rough round of visits 
be any guide, three times out of seven he is 
fragrant of drink. So much for the dm-wafi. 
Now for the houses he guards. 

Very pleasant is the sensation of being 
ushered into a pestiferously stablesome draw- 
ing-room. "Does this always happen.?" 
" No, not unless you shut up the room for 
some time ; but if you open xh^J/uhni/ls there 
are other smells. You see the stables and the 
servants' quarters are close too." People pay 
five hundred a month for half-a-dozen rooms 
filled with attr of this kind. They make no 
complaint. When they think the honor of the 
city is at stake they say defiantly : " Yes, but 
you must remember we're a metropolis. We 
are crowded here. We have no room. We 
aren't like your little stations." Chouringhi 
is a stately place full of sumptuous houses, 
but it is best to look at it hastily. Stop to 
consider for a moment what the cramped com- 
pounds, the black soaked soil, the netted in- 
tricacies of the service-staircases, the packed 
stables, the seethment of human life round the 



City of the Dreadful Night 15 

durivans^ lodges and the curious arrangement 
of little open drains means, and you will call it 
a whited sepulcher. 

Men living in expensive tenements suffer 
from chronic sore-throat, and will tell you 
cheerily that " we've got typhoid in Calcutta 
now." Is the pest ever out of it ? Everything 
seems to be built with a view to its comfort. 
It can lodge comfortably on roofs, climb along 
from the gutter-pipe to piazza, or rise from 
sink to veranda and thence to the topmost 
story. But Calcutta says that all is sound and 
produces figures to prove it ; at the same time 
admitting that healthy cut flesh will not 
readily heal. Further evidence may be dis- 
pensed with. 

Here come pouring down Park Street on 
the maidan a rush of broughams, neat buggies, 
the lightest of gigs, trim office brownberrys, 
shining victorias, and a sprinkling of veritable 
hansom cabs. In the broughams sit men in 
top-hats. In the other carts, young men, all 
very much alike, and all immaculately turned 
out. A fresh stream from Chouringhi joins 
the Park Street detachment, and the two to- 
gether stream away across the maidan toward 
the business quarter of the city. This is Cal- 
cutta going to office — the civilians to the 
Government Buildings and the young men 
to their firms and their blocks and their 
wharves. Here one sees that Calcutta has 
the best turn-out in the Empire. Horses 
and traps alike are enviably perfect, and — 



1 6 City of the Dreadful Night 

mark the touchstone of civilization — the lamps 
are hi the sockets. This is distinctly refresh- 
ing. Once more we will take off our hats 
to Calcutta, the well-appointed, the luxuri- 
ous. The country-bred is a rare beast here ; 
his place is taken by the waler, and the 
waler, though a ruffian at heart, can be made 
to look like a gentleman. It would be inde- 
corous as well as insane to applaud the wink- 
ing harness, the perfectly lacquered panels, 
and the liveried saises. They show well in 
the outwardly fair roads shadowed by the 
Palaces. 

How many sections of the complex society 
of the place do the carts carry ? I7npri7nis, 
the Bengal Civilian who goes to Writers' Build- 
ings and sits in a perfect office and speaks 
flippantly of "sending things into India," 
meaning thereby the Supreme Government. 
He is a great person, and his mouth is full of 
promotion-and-appointment " shop." Gener- 
ally he is referred to as a " rising man." Cal- 
cutta seems full of " rising men." Secondly, 
the Government of India man, who wears a 
familiar Simla face, rents a flat when he is 
not up in the Hills, and is rational on the 
subject of the drawbacks of Calcutta. Thirdly, 
the man of the " firms," the pure non-official 
who fights under the banner of one of the 
great houses of the City, or for his own hand 
in a neat office, or dashes about Clive Street 
in a brougham doing " share w'ork " or some- 
thing of the kind. He fears not "Bengal," 



City of the Dreadful Night 17 

nor regards he "India." He swears im- 
partially at both when their actions interfere 
with his operations. His " shop " is quite 
unintelligible. He is like the English city 
man with the chill off, lives well and enter- 
tains hospitably. In the old days he was 
greater than he is now, but still he bulks large. 
He is rational in so far that he will help the 
abuse of the Municipality, but womanish in 
his insistence on the excellencies of Calcutta. 
Over and above these who are hurrying to 
work are the various brigades, squads and 
detachments of the other interests. But they 
are sets and not sections, and revolve round 
Belvedere, Government House, and Fort 
William. Simla and Darjeeling claim them 
in the hot weather. Let them go. They wear 
top-hats and frock-coats. 

It is time to escape from Chouringhi Road 
and get among the long-shore folk, who have 
no prejudices against tobacco, and who all 
use pretty nearly the same sort of hat. 
2 



i8 City of the Dreadful Night 



CHAPTER III. 



THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 

He set up conclusions to the number of nine thousand 
seven hundred and sixty four ... he went after- 
ward to the Sorbonne, where he maintained argument 
against the theologians for the space of six weeks, from 
four o'clock in the morning till six in the evening, ex- 
cept for an interval of two hours to refresh themselves 
and take their repasts, and at this were present the 
greatest part of the lords of the court, the masters of 
request, presidents, counselors, those of the accompts, 
secretaries, advocates, and others ; as also the sheriffs 
of the said town. — Pantagricel. 

" The Bengal Legislative Council is sitting 
now. You will find it in an octagonal wing 
of Writers' Buildings : straight across the 
maidan. It's worth seeing." " What are they 
sitting on ? " " Municipal business. No end 
of a debate." So much for trying to keep 
low company. The long-shore loafers must 
stand over. Without doubt this Council is 
going to hang some one for the state of the 
City, and Sir Steuart Bayley will be chief ex- 
ecutioner. One does not come across Councils 
every day. 

Writers' Buildings are large. You can 
trouble the busy workers of half-a-dozen de- 
partments before you stumble upon the black- 
stained staircase that leads to an upper cham- 



City of the Dreadful Night 19 

ber looking out over a populous street. Wild 
chaprissis block the way. The Councilor 
Sahibs are sitting, but any one can enter. 
" To the right of the Lat Sahib's chair, and 
go quietly." Ill-mannered minion ! Does he 
expect the awe-stricken spectator to prance in 
with a jubilant war-whoop or turn Catherine- 
wheels round that sumptuous octagonal room 
with the blue-domed roof I There are gilt 
capitals to the half pillars and an Egyptian 
patterned lotus-stencil makes the walls de- 
corously gay. A thick piled carpet covers all 
the floor, and must be delightful in the hot 
weather. On a black wooden throne, com- 
fortably cushioned in green leather, sits Sir 
Steuart Bayley, Ruler of Bengal. The rest 
are all great men, or else they would not be 
there. Not to know them argues oneself un- 
known. There are a dozen of them, and sit 
six aside at two slightly curved lines of beauti- 
fully polished desks. Thus Sir Steuart Bayley 
occupies the frog of a badly made horseshoe 
split at the toe. In front of him, at a table 
covered with books and pamphlets and papers, 
toils a secretary. There is a seat for the Re- 
porters, and that is all. The place enjoys a 
chastened gloom, and its very atmosphere 
fills one with awe. This is the heart of Bengal, 
and uncommonly well upholstered. If the 
work matches the first-class furniture, the ink- 
pots, the carpets, and the resplendent ceiling, 
there will be something worth seeing. But 
where is the criminal who is to be hanged for 



20 City of the Dreadful Night 

the stench that runs up and down Writers' 
Buildings staircases, for the rubbish heaps 
in the Chitpore Road, for the sickly savor of 
Chouringhi, for the dirty little tanks at the 
back of Belvedere, for the street full of small- 
pox, for the reeking gharri-stand outside the 
Great Eastern, for the state of the stone and 
dirt pavements, for the condition of the gullies 
of Shampooker, and for a hundred other 
things ? 

" This, I submit, is an artificial scheme in 
supersession of Nature's unit, the individual." 
The speaker is a slight, spare native in a flat 
hat-turban, and a black alpaca frock-coat. 
He looks like a vakil to the boot-heels, and, 
with his unvarying smile and regulated ges- 
ticulation, recalls memories of up-country 
courts. He never hesitates, is never at a loss 
for a word, and never in one sentence repeats 
himself. He talks and talks and talks in a 
level voice, rising occasionally half an octave 
when a point has to be driven home. Some 
of his periods sound very familiar. This, for 
instance, might be a sentence from the Mi?-- 
ror : "So much for the principle. Let us 
now examine how far it is supported by prec- 
edent.'^ This sounds bad. When a fluent 
native is discoursing of "principles" and 
"precedents," the chances are that he will go 
on for some time. IMoreover, where is the 
criminal, and what is all this talk about ab- 
stractions ? They want shovels not senti- 
ments, in this part of the world. 



City of the Dreadful Night 21 

A friendly whisper brings enlightenment; 
" They are plowing through the Calcutta Mu- 
nicipal Bill — plurality of votes you know ; 
here are the papers." And so it is ! Amass 
of motions and amendments on matters relat- 
ing to ward votes. Is A to be allowed to give 
two votes in one ward and one in another.? 
Is section ten to be omitted, and is one man 
to be allowed one vote and no more ? How 
many votes does three hundred rupees' worth 
of landed property carry? Is it better to kiss 
a post or throw it in the fire .'* Not a word 
about carbolic acid and gangs of douies. The 
little man in the black choga revels in his sub- 
ject. He is great on principles and prece- 
dents, and the necessity of '' popularizing our 
system." He fears that under certain cir- 
cumstances " the status of the candidates will 
decline." He riots in "self-adjusting major- 
ities,^' and the healthy influence of the edu- 
cated middle classes. 

For a practical answer to this, there steals 
across the council chamber just one faint 
whiff. It is as though some one laughed low 
and bitterly. But no man heeds. The English- 
men look supremely bored, the native mem- 
bers stare stolidly in front of them. Sir 
Steuart Bayley's face is as set as the face of 
the Sphinx. For these things he draws his 
pay, and his is a low wage for heavy labor. 
But the speaker, now adrift, is not altogether 
to be blamed. He is a Bengali, who has got 
before him just such a subject as his soul 



22 City of the Dreadful Night 

loveth — an elaborate piece of academical re- 
form leading no-whither. Here is a quiet 
room full of pens and papers, and there are 
men who must listen to him. Apparently there 
is no time limit to the speeches. Can you 
wonder that he talks ? He says " I submit " 
once every ninety seconds, varying the form 
wnth " I do submit." The popular element 
in the electoral body should have prominence. 
Quite so. He quotes one John Stuart Mill to 
prove it. There steals over the listener a 
numbing sense of nightmare. He has heard 
all this before somewhere — yea ; even down 
to J. S. Mill and the references to the " true 
interests of the ratepayers." He sees what 
is coming next. Yes, there is the old Sabha 
Anjuman journalistic formula — " Western edu- 
cation is an exotic plant of recent importa- 
tion. " How on earth did this man drag West- 
ern education into this discussion ? W^ho 
knows ? Perhaps Sir Steuart Bayley does. 
He seems to be listening. The others are 
looking at their watches. The spell of the 
level voice sinks the listener yet deeper into 
a trance. He is haunted by the ghosts of all 
the cant of all the political platforms of Great 
Britain. He hears all the old, old vestry 
phrases, and once more he smells the smell. 
That is no dream. Western education is an 
exotic plant. It is the upas tree, and it is all 
our fault. We brought it out from England 
exactly as we brought out the ink bottles and 
the patterns for the chairs. We planted it 



City of the Dreadful Night 23 

and it grew — monstrous as a banian. Now 
we are choked by tlie roots of it spreading so 
thickly in this fat soil of Bengal. The speaker 
continues. Bit by bit. We builded this 
dome, visible and invisible, the crown of 
Writers' Buildings, as we have built and 
peopled the buildings. Now we have gone 
too far to retreat, being " tied and bound with 
the chain of our own sins." The speech con- 
tinues. We made that florid sentence. That 
torrent of verbiage is ours. We taught him 
what was constitutional and what was uncon- 
stitutional in the days when Calcutta smelt. 
Calcutta smells still, but we must listen to all 
that he has to say about the plurality of votes 
and the threshing of wind and the weaving of 
ropes of sand. It is our own fault absolutely. 
The speech ends, and there rises a gray 
Englishman in a black frock-coat. He looks 
a strong man, and a worldly. Surely he will 
say : " Yes, Lala Sahib, all this may be true 
talk, but there's a biirra krab smell in this 
place, and everything must be safkaroed in a 
week, or the Deputy Commissioner will not 
take any notice of you in durbarT He says 
nothing of the kind. This is a Legislative 
Council where they call each other " Honor- 
able So-and-So's." The Englishman in the 
frock-coat begs all to remember that " we are 
discussing principles, and no consideration of 
the details ought to influence the verdict on 
the principles." Is he then like the rest ? 
How does this strange thing come about ? 



24 City of the Dreadful Night 

Perhaps these so English office fittings are re- 
sponsible for the warp. The Council Chamber 
might be a London Board-room. Perhaps 
after long years among the pens and papers 
its occupants grow to think that it really is, 
and in this belief give resumes of the history 
of Local Self-Government in England. 

The black frock-coat, emphasizing his points 
with his spectacle-case, is telling his friends 
how the parish was first the unit of self-gov- 
ernment. He then explains how burgesses 
were elected, and in tones of deep fervor 
announces : " Commissioners of Sewers are 
elected in the same way." Whereunto all 
this lecture.'* Is he trying to run a motion 
through under cover of a cloud of words, es- 
saying the well-known " cuttle-fish trick " of 
the West ? 

He abandons England for a while, 2LX\dji07v 
we get a glimpse of the cloven hoof in a casual 
reference to Hindus and Mahomedans. The 
Hindus will lose nothing by the complete es- 
tablishment of plurality of votes. They will 
have the control of their own wards as they 
used to have. So there is race-feeling, to be 
explained away, even among these beautiful 
desks. Scratch the Council, and you come to 
the old, old trouble. The black frock-coat 
sits down, and a keen-eyed, black-bearded 
Englishman rises with one hand in his pocket 
to explain his views on an alteration of the 
vote qualification. The idea of an amend- 
ment seems to have just struck him. He 



City of the Dreadful Night 25 

hints that he will bring it forward later on. 
He is academical like the others, but not half 
so good a speaker. All this is dreary beyond 
words. Why do they talk and talk about 
owners and occupiers and burgesses in Eng- 
land and the growth of autonomous institu- 
tions when the city, the great city, is here cry- 
ing out to be cleansed ? What has England to 
do with Calcutta's evil, and why should En- 
glishmen be forced to wander tlirough mazes 
of unprofitable argument against men who 
cannot understand the iniquity of dirt .? 

A pause follows the black-bearded man's 
speech. Rises another native, a heavily- 
built Babu, in a black gown and a strange 
head-dress. A snowy white strip of cloth is 
thrown y/^<z;7/;/-wise over his shoulders. His 
voice is high, and not always under control. 
He begins : " I will try to be as brief as pos- 
sible." This is ominous. By the way, in 
Council there seems to be no necessity for a 
form of address. The orators plunge in 
inedias res^ and only when they are well 
launched throw an occasional " Sir " toward 
Sir Steuart Bayley, who sits with one leg 
doubled under him and a dry pen in his hand. 
This speaker is no good. He talks, but he 
says nothing, and he only knows where he is 
drifting to. He says : "We must remember 
that we are legislating for the Metropolis of 
India, and therefore we should borrow our 
institutions from large English towns, and not 
from parochial institutions." If you think for 



26 City of the Dreadful Night 

a minute, that shows a large and healthy 
knowledge of the history of Local Self-Gov- 
ernment. It also reveals the attitude of-Cal- 
cutta. If the city thought less about itself as 
a metropolis and more as a midden, its state 
would be better. The speaker talks patroniz- 
ingly of " my friend," alluding to the black 
frock-coat. Then he flounders afresh, and his 
voice gallops up the gamut as he declares, 
" and therefore that makes all the difference." 
He hints vaguely at threats, something to do 
with the Hindus and the Mahomedans, but 
what he means it is difficult to discover. 
Here, however, is a sentence taken verbati7}i. 
It is not likely to appear in this form in the 
Calcutta papers. The black frock-coat had 
said that if a wealthy native " had eight 
votes to his credit, his vanity would prompt 
him to go to the polling-booth, because he 
would feel better than half-a-dozen gharri- 
wans or petty traders." (Fancy allowing a 
gharri-wan to vote ! He has yet to learn how 
to drive !) Hereon the gentleman with the 
white cloth : '' Then the complaint is that in- 
fluential voters will not take the trouble to 
vote. In my humble opinion, if that be so, 
adopt voting papers. That is the way to meet 
them. In the same way — The Calcutta 
Trades' Association — you abolish all plurality 
of votes : and that is the way to meet thein.'^ 
Lucid, is it not? Up flies the irresponsible 
voice, and delivers this statement : " In the 
election for the House of Commons plurality 



City of the Dreadful Night 27 

are allowed for persons having interest indif- 
ferent districts." Then hopeless, hopeless fog. 
It is a great pity that India ever heard of 
anybody higher than the heads of the Civil 
Service. The country appeals from the Chota 
to the Bu7'ra Sahib all too readily as it is. 
Once more a whiff. The gentleman gives a 
defiant jerk of his shoulder-cloth, and sits 
down. 

Then Sir Steuart Bayley : "The question 
before the Council is," etc. There is a ripple 
of " Ayes " and " Noes, and the " Noes " have 
it, whatever it may be. The black-bearded 
gentleman springs his amendment about the 
voting qualifications. A large senator in a 
white waistcoat, and with a most genial smile, 
rises and proceeds to smash up the amend- 
ment. Can't see the use of it. Calls it in 
effect rubbish. The black frock-coat rises to 
explain his friend's amendment, and inciden- 
tally makes a funny little slip. He is a knight, 
and his friend has been newly knighted. He 
refers to him as "Mister." The black choga, 
he who spoke first of all, speaks again, and 
talks of the ^^ sojorjier v^'ho comes here for a 
little time, and then leaves the land." Well 
it is for the black choga that the sojourner 
does come, or there would be no comfy places 
wherein to talk about the power that can be 
measured by wealth and the intellect " which, 
sir, I submit, cannot be so measured." The 
amendment is lost, and trebly and quadruply 
lost is the listener. In the name of sanity and 



28 City of the Dreadful Night 

to preserve the tattered shirt tails of a torn 
illusion, let us escape. This is the Calcutta 
Municipal Bill. They have been at it for 
several Saturdays. Last Saturday Sir Steuart 
Bayley pointed out that at their present rate 
they would be about two years in getting it 
through. Now they will sit till dusk, unless 
Sir SteuartBayley, who wants to see Lord Con- 
nemara off, puts up the black frock-coat to 
move an adjournment. It is not good to see 
a Government close to. This leads to the 
formation of blatantly self-satisfied judgments, 
which may be quite as wrong as the cramping 
system with which we have encompassed 
ourselves. And in the streets outside English- 
men summarize the situation brutally, thus : 
*'The whole thing is a farce. Time is money 
to us. We can't stick out those everlasting 
speeches in the municipality. The natives 
choke us off, but we know that if things get too 
bad the Government will step in and interfere, 
and so we worry along somehow." Meantime 
Calcutta continues to cry out for the bucket 
and the broom. 



City of the Dreadful Night 29 
CHAPTER IV. 

ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI. 

The clocks of the city have struck two. 
Where can a man get food ? Calcutta is not 
rich in respect of dainty accommodation. You 
can stay your stomach at Peliti's or Bonsard's 
but their shops are not to be found in liasting 
Street, or in the places where brokers fly to 
and fro in office-jauns, sweating and growing 
visibly 7'icli. There must be some sort of 
entertainment where sailors congregate. 
" Honest Bombay Jack " supplies nothing but 
Burma cheroots and whisky in liquor glasses, 
but in Lai Bazar, not far from " The Sailors ' 
Coffee-rooms," a board gives bold advertise- 
ment that " officers and seamen can find good 
quarters. " IiT evidence a row of neat officers 
and seamen are sitting on a bench by the 
"hotel " door smoking. There is an almost 
military likeness in their clothes. Perhaps 
" Honest Bombay Jack " only keeps one kind 
of felt hat and one brand of suit. When Jack 
of the mercantile marine is sober, he is very 
sober. When he is drunk he is — but ask the 
river police what a lean, mad Yankee can do 
with his nails and teeth. These gentlemen 
smoking on the bench are impassive almost as 
Red Indians. Their attitudes are unrestrained, 



30 City of the Dreadful Night 

and they do not wear braces. Nor, it would 
appear from the bill of fare, are they particular 
as to what they eat when they attend table 
d'hote. The fare is substantial and the regula- 
tion peg — every house has its own depth of 
peg if you will refrain from stopping Gany- 
mede — something to wonder at. Three fingers 
and a trifle over seems to be the use of the 
officers and seamen who are talking so quietly 
in the doorway. One says — he has evidently 
finished a long story — " and so he shipped for 
four pound ten with a first mate's certificate 
and all, and that was in a German barque." 
Another spits with conviction and says genially, 
without raising his voice : " That was a hell 
of a ship ; who knows her ? " No answer 
from the panchayet., but a Dane or a German 
wants to know whether the Myra is " up " yet. 
A dry, red-haired man gives her exact position 
in the river — (How in the world can he know ?) 
— and the probable hour of her arrival. The 
grave debate drifts into a discussion of a re- 
cent river accident, whereby a big steamer was 
damaged, and had to put back and discharge 
cargo. A burly gentleman who is taking a con- 
stitutional down Lai Bazar strolls up and says : 
" I tell you she fouled her own chain with her 
own forefoot. Hev you seen the plates ? " 

*' No." Then how the can any like 

you say what it well was ? " He passes 

on, having delivered his highly-flavored opin- 
ion without heat or passion. No one seems to 
resent the expletives. 



City of the Dreadful Night 31 

Let us get down to the river and see this 
stamp of men more thoroughly. Clarke Rus- 
sell has told us that their lives are hard 
enough in all conscience. What are their 
pleasures and diversions ? The Port Office, 
where lives the gentlemen who make improve- 
ments in the Port of Calcutta, ought to supply 
information. It stands large and fair, and 
built in an orientalized manner after the 
Italians at the corner of Fairlie Place upon 
the great Strand Road, and a continual clamor 
of traffic by land and by sea goes up through- 
out the day and far into the night against its 
windows. This is a place to enter more rev- 
erently than the Bengal Legislative Council, 
for it houses the direction of the uncertain 
Hugli down to the Sandheads, owns enormous 
wealth, and spends huge sums on the front- 
aging of river banks, the expansion of jetties, 
and the manufacture of docks costing two 
hundred lakhs of rupees. Two million tons 
of sea-going shippage yearly find their way 
up and down the river by the guidance of the 
Port Office, and the men of the Port Office 
know more than it is good for men to hold in 
their heads. They can without reference to 
telegraphic bulletins give the position of all 
the big steamers, coming up or going down, 
from the Hugli to the sea, day by day with 
their tonnage, the names of their captains and 
the nature of their cargo. Looking out from 
the veranda of their officer over a lancer-regi- 
ment of masts, they can declare truthfully the 



32 City of the Dreadful Night 

name of every ship within eye-scope, with the 
day and hour when she will depart. 

In a room at the bottom of the building 
lounge big men, carefully dressed. Now 
there is a type of face which belongs almost 
exclusively to Bengal Cavalry officers — majors 
for choice. Everybody knows the bronzed, 
black-mustached, clear-speaking Native Cav- 
alry officer. He exists unnaturally in novels, 
and naturally on the frontier. These men in 
the big room have its caste of face so strongly 
marked that one marvels what officers are 
doing by the river. " Have they come to book 
passengers for home?" "Those men! 
They're pilots. Some of them draw between 
two and three thousand rupees a month. They 
are responsible for half-a-million pounds' 
worth of cargo sometimes." They certainly 
are men, and they carry themselves as such. 
They confer together by twos and threes, and 
appeal frequently to shipping lists. 

" Zr;/'/ a pilot a man who always wears a 
peajacket and shouts through a speaking- 
trumpet ? " " Well, you can ask those gentle- 
men if you like. You've got your notions 
from home pilots. Ours aren't that kind ex- 
actly. They are a picked service, as carefully 
weeded as the Indian Civil. Some of 'em 
have brothers in it, and some belong to the 
old Indian army families." But they are not 
all equally well paid. The Calcutta papers 
sometimes echo the groans of the junior pil- 
ots who are not allowed the handling of ships 



City of the Dreadful Night 33 

over a certain tonnage. As it is yearly grow- 
ing cheaper to build one big steamer than two 
little ones, these juniors are crowded out, and, 
while the seniors get their thousands, some of 
the youngsters make at the end of one month 
exactly thirty rupees. This is a grievance 
with tliem ; and it seems well-founded. 

In the flats above the pilots' room are 
hushed and chapel-like offices, all sumptuously 
fitted, where Englishmen write and telephone 
and telegraph, and deft Babus forever draw 
maps of the shifting Hugli. Any hope of 
understanding the work of the Port Commis- 
sioners is thoroughly dashed by being taken 
through the Port maps of a quarter of a cen- 
tury past. Men have played with the Hugli 
as children play with a gutter-runnel, and, in 
return, the Hugli once rose and played with 
men and ships till the Strand Road was littered 
with the raffle and the carcasses of big ships. 
There are photos on the walls of the cyclone 
of '64, when the Thunder came inland and sat 
upon an American barque, obstructing all the 
traffic. Very curious are these photos, and 
almost impossible to believe. How can a big, 
strong steamer have her three masts razed to 
deck level ? How can a heavy, country boat 
be pitched on to the poop of a high-walled 
liner ? and how can the side be bodily torn out 
of a ship ? The photos say that all these things 
are possible, and men aver that a cyclone may 
come again and scatter the craft like chaff. 
Outside the Port Office are the export and im- 
3 



34 City of the Dreadful Night 

port sheds, buildings that can hold a ship's 
cargo a-piece, all standing on reclaimed ground. 
Here be several strong smells, a mass of rail- 
way lines, and a multitude of men. " Do you 
see where that trolly is standing, behind the 
big P. and O. berth ? In that place as nearly as 
maybe the Govindpiir \^^x\\. down about twenty 
years ago, and began to shift out ! " " But 
that is solid ground." " She sank there, and 
the next tide made a scour-hole on one side 
of her. The returning tide knocked her into 
it. Then the mud made up behind her. Next 
tide the business was repeated — always the 
scour-hole in the mud and the filling up be- 
hind her. So she rolled and was pushed out 
and out until she got in the way of the ship- 
ping right out yonder, and we had to blow her 
up. When a ship sinks in mud or quicksand 
she regularly digs her own grave and wriggles 
herself into it deeper and deeper till she 
reaches moderately solid stuff. Then she 
sticks." Horrible idea, is it not, to go down 
and down with each tide into the foul Hugli 
mud ? 

Close to the Port Offices is the Shipping 
Office, where the captains engage their crews. 
The men must produce their discharges from 
their last ships in the presence of the ship- 
ping master, or as they call him — "The 
Deputy Shipping." He passes them as cor- 
rect after having satisfied himself that they 
are not deserters from other ships, and they 
then sign articles for the voyage. This is the 



City of the Dreadful Night 35 

ceremony, beginning with the " dearly be- 
loved " of the crew-hunting captain down to 
the " amazement " of the identified deserter. 
There is a dingy building, next door to the 
Sailors' Home, at whose gate stand the cast- 
ups of all the seas in all manner of raiment. 
There are Seedee boys, Bombay serangs and 
Madras fishermen of the salt villages, Malays 
who insist upon marrying native women grow 
jealous and run amok : Malay-Hindus, Hindu- 
Malay-whites, Burmese, Burma-whites, Bur- 
ma-native-whites, Italians with gold earrings 
and a thirst for gambling, Yankees of all the 
States, with Mulattoes and pure buck-niggers, 
red and rough Danes, Cingalese, Cornish 
boys who seem fresh taken from the plow- 
tail " corn-stalks " from colonial ships where 
they got four pound ten a month as seamen, 
tun-bellied Germans, Cockney mates keeping 
a little aloof from the crowd and talking in 
knots together, unmistakable " Tommies " 
who have tumbled into seafaring life by some 
mistake, cockatoo-tufted Welshmen spitting 
and swearing like cats, broken-down loafers, 
gray-headed, penniless, and pitiful, swagger- 
ing boys, and very quiet men with gashes and 
cuts on their faces. It is an ethnological 
museum where all the specimens are playing 
comedies and tragedies. The head of it all 
is the " Deputy Shipping," and he sits, sup- 
ported by an English policeman whose fists 
are knobby, in a great Chair of State. The 
*' Deputy Shipping '' knows all the iniquity of 



36 City of the Dreadful Night 

the riverside, all the ships, all the captains, 
and a fair amount of the men. He is fenced 
off from the crowd by a strong wooden rail- 
ing, behind which are gathered those who 
" stand and wait," the unemployed of the mer- 
cantile marine. They have had their spree — 
poor devils — and now they will go to sea 
again on as low a wage as three pound ten a 
month, to fetch up at the end in some Shang- 
hai stew or San Francisco hell. They have 
turned their backs on the seductions of the 
Howrah boarding-houses and the delights of 
Colootollah. If Fate will, " Nightingales " 
will know them no more for a season, and 
their successors may paint Collinga Bazar 
vermilion. But what captain will take some 
of these battered, shattered wrecks whose 
hands shake and whose eyes are red ? 

Enter suddenly a bearded captain, who has 
made his selection from the crowd on a pre- 
vious day, and now wants to get his men 
passed. He is not fastidious in his choice. 
His eleven seem a tough lot for such a mild- 
eyed, civil-spoken man to manage. But the 
captain in the Shipping Office and the captain 
on the ship are two different things. He 
brings his crew up to the " Deputy Ship- 
ping's " bar, and hands in their greasy, tattered 
discharges. But the heart of the " Deputy 
Shipping " is hot within him, because, two days 
ago, a Howrah crimp stole a whole crew from 
a dowMi-dropping ship, insomuch that the cap- 
tain had to come back and whip up a new 



City of the Dreadful Night 37 

crew at one o'clock in the day. Evil will it 
be if the '^ Deputy Shipping "' finds one of 
these bounty-jumpers in the chosen crew of 
the Bleiikindoon, let us say. 

The " Deputy Shipping " tells the story 
with heat. " I didn't know they did such 
things in Calcutta, " says the captain. "Do 
such things ! They'd steal the eye-teeth out 
of your head there, Captain." He picks up a 
discharge and calls for Michael Donelly, who 
is a loose-knit, vicious-looking Irish-Ameri- 
can who chews. *' Stand up, man, stand up ! " 
Michael Donelly wants to lean against the 
desk, and the English policeman won't have 
it. "What was your last ship?" ^^ Fairy 
Qneen,^' *' When did you leave her ? " "'Bout 
'leven days." " Captain's name .-* " " Flahy." 
" That'll do. Next man : Jules Anderson." 
Jules Anderson is a Dane. His statements 
tally with the discharge-certificate of the 
United States, as the Eagle attesteth. He is 
passed and falls back. Slivey, the English- 
man, and David, a huge plum-colored negro 
who ships as cook, are also passed. Then 
comes Bassompra, a little Italian, who speaks 
English. " What's your last ship ? " " Ferdi- 
naiidr " No, after that ? " " German barque." 
Bassompra does not look happy. " When 
did she sail?" "About three weeks ago." 
" What's her name ? " " Baidee:' '' You 
deserted from her?" "Yes, but she's left 
port." The " Deputy Shipping " runs rapidly 
through a shipping-list, throws it down with 



38 City of the Dreadful Night 

a bang. " 'Twon't do. No German barque 
Haidee here for three months. How do I 
know you don't belong to \\-\^ Jackson's crew? 
Cap'ain, I'm afraid you'll have to shipanother 
man. He must stand over. Take the rest 
away and make 'em sign." 

The bead-eyed Bassompra seems to have 
lost his chance of a voyage, and his case will 
be inquired into. The captain departs with 
his men and they sign articles for the voyage, 
while the "Deputy Shipping" tells strange 
tales of the sailorman's life. " They'll quit a 
good ship for the sake of a spree, and catch 
on again at three pound ten, and by Jove, 
they'll let their skippers pay 'em at ten rupees 
to the sovereign — poor beggars ! As soon as 
the money's gone they'll ship, but not before. 
Every one under rank of captain engages here. 
The competition makes first mates ship some- 
times for five pounds or as low as four ten a 
month." (The gentleman in the boarding- 
house was right, you see.) "A first mate's 
wages are seven ten or eight, and foreign cap- 
tains ship for twelve pounds a month and 
bring their own small stores — everything, that 
is to say, except beef, peas, flour, coffee and 
molasses." 

These things are not pleasant to listen to 
while the hungry-eyed men in the bad clothes 
lounge and scratch and loaf behind the rail- 
ing. What comes to them in the end ? They 
die, it seems, though that is not altogether 
strange. They die at sea in strange and hor- 



City of the Dreadful Night 39 

rible ways ; they die, a few of them, in the 
Kintals, being lost and suffocated in the great 
sink of Calcutta ; they die in strange places 
by the waterside, and the Hugli takes them 
away under the mooring chains and the buoys, 
and casts them up on the sands below, if the 
River Police have missed the capture. They 
sail the sea because they must live ; and there 
is no end to their toil. Very, very few find 
haven of any kind, and the earth, whose ways 
they do not understand, is cruel to them, 
when they walk upon it to drink and be 
merry after the manner of beasts. Jack 
ashore is a pretty thing when he is in a book 
or in the blue jacket of the Navy. Mercan- 
tile Jack is not so lovely. Later on, we will 
see where his " sprees " lead him. 



CHAPTER V. 

WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE. 

" The City was of Night — perchance of Death, 
But certainly of Night." 

— The City of Dreadful Night. 

In the beginning, the Police were respon- 
sible. They said in a patronizing way that, 
merely as a matter of convenience, they would 
prefer to take a wanderer round the great 



40 City of the Dreadful Night 

city themselves, sooner than let him contract 
a broken head on his own account in the 
slums. They said that there were places and 
places where a white man, unsupported by 
the arm of the law, would be robbed and 
mobbed ; and that there were other places 
where drunken seamen would make it very 
unpleasant for him. There was a night fixed 
for the patrol, but apologies were offered be- 
forehand for the comparative insignificance of 
the tour. 

" Come up to the fire lookout in the first 
place, and then you'll be able to see the city." 
This was at No. 22, Lai Bazar, which is the 
headquarters of the Calcutta Police, the center 
of the great web of telephone wires where 
Justice sits all day and all night looking after 
one million people and a floating population 
of one hundred thousand. But her work shall 
be dealt with later on. The fire lookout is a 
little sentry-box on the top of the three-storied 
police of^ces. Here a native watchman waits 
always, ready to give warning to the brigade 
below if the smoke rises by day or the flames 
by night in any ward of the city. From this 
eyrie, in the warm night, one hears the heart 
of Calcutta beating. Northward, the city 
stretches away three long miles, with three 
more miles of suburbs beyond, to Dum-Dum 
and Barrackpore. The lamplit dusk on this 
side is full of noises and shouts and smells. 
Close to the Police Ofifice, jovial mariners at 
the sailors' coffee-shop are roaring hymns. 



City of the Dreadful Night 41 

Southerly, the city's confused lights give place 
to the orderly lamp-rows of the tiiaidan and 
Chouringhi, where the respectabilities live 
and the Police have very little to do. From 
the east goes up to the sky the clamor of 
Sealdah, the rumble of the trams, and the 
voices of all Bow Bazar chaffering and mak- 
ing merry. Westward are the business quar- 
ters, hushed now, the lamps of the shipping 
on the river, and the twinkling lights on the 
Howrah side. It is a wonderful sight — this 
Pisgah view of a huge city resting after the 
labors of the day. " Does the noise of traffic 
goon all through the hot weather.?" "Of 
course. The hot months are the busiest in 
the year and money's tightest. You should 
see the brokers cutting about at that season. 
Calcutta can't stop, my dear sir." "What 
happens then?'' "Nothing happens; the 
death-rate goes up a little. That's all ! " 
Even in February, the weather would, up- 
country, be called muggy and stifling, but 
Calcutta is convinced that it is her cold sea- 
son. The noises of the city grow perceptibly ; 
it is the night side of Calcutta waking up and 
going abroad. Jack in the sailors' coffee-shop 
is singing joyously : " Shall we gather at the 
River — the beautiful, the beautiful, the 
River ? " What an incongruity there is about 
his selections. However, that it amuses be- 
fore it shocks the listeners, is not to be 
doubted. An Englishman, far from his native 
land is liable to become careless, and it would 



42 City of the Dreadful Night 

be remarkable if he did otherwise in ill-smell- 
ing Calcutta. There is a clatter of hoofs in 
the courtyard below. Some of the Mounted 
Police have come in from somewhere or other 
out of the great darkness. A clog-dance of 
iron hoof follows, and an' Englishman's voice 
is heard soothing an agitated horse who seems 
to be standing on his hind legs. Some of the 
Mounted Police are going out into the great 
darkness. " What's on ? " " Walk round at 
Government House. The Reserve men are 
being formed up below. They're calling the 
roll.'' The Reserve men are all English, and 
big English at that. They form up and tramp 
out of the courtyard to line Government Place, 
and see that Mrs. Lollipop's brougham does 
not get smashed up by Sirdar Chuckerbutty 
Bahadur's lumbering C-spring barouche with 
the two raw Walers. Very military men are 
the Calcutta European Police in their set-up, 
and he who knows their composition knows 
some startling stories of gentlemen-rankers and 
the like. They are, despite the wearing cli- 
mate they work in and the wearing work they 
do, as fine five-score of P2nglishmen as you 
shall find east of Suez. 

Listen for a moment from the fire lookout to 
the voices of the night, and you will see why 
they must be so. Two thousand sailors of fifty 
nationalities are adrift in Calcutta every 
Sunday, and of these perhaps two hundred 
are distinctly the worse for liquor. There is 
a mild row going on, even now, somewhere at 



City of the Dreadful Night 43 

the back of Bow Bazar, which at nightfall 
fills with sailor-men who have a wonderful 
gift of falling foul of the native population. 
To keep the Queen's peace is of course only a 
small portion of Police duty, but it is trying. 
The burly president of the lock-up for 
European drunks — Calcutta central lock-up is 
worth seeing — rejoices in a sprained thumb just 
now, and has to do his work left-handed in con- 
sequence. But his left hand is a marvelously 
persuasive one, and when on duty his sleeves 
are turned up to the shoulder that the jovial 
mariner may see that there is no deception. 
The president's labors are handicapped in that 
the road of sin to the lock-up runs through a 
grimy little garden — the brick paths are worn 
deep with the tread of many drunken feet — 
where a man can give a great deal of trouble 
by sticking his toes into the ground and get- 
ting mixed up with the shrubs. " A straight 
run in ^' would be much more convenient both 
for the president and the drunk. Generally 
speaking — and here Police experience is pretty 
much the same all over the civilized world — a 
woman drunk is a good deal worse than a man 
drunk. She scratches and bites like a China- 
man and swears like several fiends. Strange 
people may be unearthed in the lock-ups. 
Here is a perfectly true story, not three weeks 
old. A visitor, an unofficial one, wandered 
into the native side of the spacious accommoda- 
tion provided for those who have gone or done 
wrong. A wild-eyed Babu rose from the fixed 



44 City of the Dreadful Night 

charpoy and said in the best of English : 
*' Good-morning, sir." " 6^^^<^-morning ; who 
are you, and what are you in for?" Then 
the Babu, in one breath : " I would have you 
know that I do not go to prison as a criminal 
but as a reformer. You've read the Vicar of 
Wakefield V " Ye-es." "Well, /am the 
Vicar of Bengal — at least that's what I call 
myself." The visitor collapsed. He had not 
nerve enough to continue the conversation. 
Then said the voice of the authority : *' He's 
down in connection with a cheating case at 
Serampore. May be shamming. But he'll 
be looked to in time." 

The best place to hear about the Police 
is the fire lookout. From that eyrie one can 
see how difficult must be the work of control 
over the great, growling beast of a city. By 
all means let us abuse the Police, but let us 
see what the poor wretches have to do with 
their three thousand natives and one hundred 
Englishmen. From Howrah and Bally and 
the other suburbs at least a hundred thousand 
people come in to Calcutta for the day and 
leave at night. Also Chandernagore is handy 
for the fugitive law-breaker, who can enter in 
the evening and get away before the noon of 
the next day, having marked his house and 
broken into it. 

" But how can the prevalent offense be 
house-breaking in a place like this? " 
" Easily enough. When you've seen a little 
of the city you'll see. Natives sleep and lie 



City of the Dreadful Night 45 

about all over the place, and whole quarters 
are just so many rabbit-warrens. Wait till 
you see the Machua Bazar. Well, besides 
the petty theft and burglary, we have heavy 
cases of forgery and fraud, that leaves us 
with our wits pitted against a Bengali's. 
When a Bengali criminal is working a fraud 
of the sort he loves, he is about the cleverest 
soul you could wish for. He gives us cases 
a year long to unravel. Then there are the 
murders in the low houses — very curious 
things they are. You'll see the house where 
Sheikh Babu was murdered presently, and 
you'll understand. The Burra Bazar and Jora 
Bagan sections are the two worst ones for 
heavy cases ; but Colootollah is the most ag- 
gravating. There's Colootollah over yonder 
— that patch of darkness beyond the lights. 
That section is full of tuppenny-ha'penny 
petty cases, that keep the men up all night 
and make 'em swear. You'll see Colootollah, 
and then perhaps you'll understand. Bamun 
Bustee is the quietest of all, and Lai Bazar 
and Bow Bazar, as you can see for yourself, 
are the rowdiest. You've no notion what the 
natives come to the thannahs for. A naickar 
will come in and want a summons against his 
master for refusing him half-an-hour's chiiti. 
I suppose it does seem rather revolutionary to 
an up-country man, but they try to do it here. 
Now wait a minute, before we go down into the 
city and see the Fire Brigade turned out. 
Business is slack with them just now, but you 



46 City of the Dreadful Night 

time 'em and see." An order is given, and a 
bell strikes softly thrice. There is an orderly 
rush of men, the click of a bolt, a red fire- 
engine, spitting and swearing with the sparks 
flying from the furnace, is dragged out of its 
shelter. A huge brake, which holds supple- 
mentary horses, men, and hatchets, follows, 
and a hose-cart is the third on the list. The 
men push the heavy things about as though 
they were pith toys. Five horses appear. 
Two are shot into the fire-engine, two — mon- 
sters these — into the brake, and the fifth, a 
powerful beast, warranted to trot fourteen 
miles an hour, backs into the hose-cart shafts. 
The men clamber up, some one says softly, 
''AH ready there," and with an angry whistle 
the fire-engine, followed by the other two, flies 
out into Lai Bazar, the sparks trailing behind. 
Time — i min. 40 sees. " They'll find out it's 
a false alarm, and come back again in five 
minutes." "Why?" "Because there will 
be no constables on the road to give 'em the 
direction of the fire, and because the driver 
wasn't told the ward of the outbreak when he 
went out ! " " Do you mean to say that you 
can from this absurd pigeon-loft locate the 
wards in the night-time?" "Of course: 
what would be the good of a lookout if the 
man couldn't tell where the fire was ? " " But 
it's all pitchy black, and the lights are so con- 
fusing." 

"Ila! Ha! You'll be more confused in 
ten minutes. You'll have lost your way as you 



City of the Dreadful Night 47 

never lost it before. You're going to go 
round Bow Bazar section." 

" And the Lord have mercy on my soul ! " 
Calcutta, the darker portion of it, does not 
look an inviting place to dive into at night. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. 

" And since they cannot spend or use aright 
The Uttle time here given them in trust, 
But lavish it in weary undeUght 

Of foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust — 
They naturally claimeth to inherit 
The Everlasting Future — that their merit 

May have full scope. ... As surely is most 
just." 

— The City of Dreadful Night. 

The difficulty is to prevent this account 
from growing steadily unwholesome. But one 
cannot rake through a big city without encoun- 
tering muck. 

The Police kept their word. In five short 
minutes, as they had prophesied, their charge 
was lost as he had never been lost before. 
" Where are we now ? " " Somewhere off the 
the Chitpore Road, but you wouldn't under- 
stand if you were told. Follow now, and step 
pretty much where we step — there's a good 
deal of filth hereabouts." 



48 City of the Dreadful Night 

The thick, greasy night shuts in everything. 
We have gone beyond the ancestral houses of 
the Ghoses of the Boses, beyond the lamps, 
the smells, and the crowd of Chitpore Road, 
and have come to a great wilderness of packed 
houses — just such mysterious, conspiring ten- 
ements as Dickens would have loved. There 
is no breath of breeze here, and the air is per- 
ceptibly warmer. There is little regularity in 
the drift, and the utmost niggardliness in the 
spacing of what, for want of a better name, we 
must call the streets. If Calcutta keeps such 
luxuries as Commissioners of Sewers and Pav- 
ing, they die before they reach this place. The 
air is heavy with a faint, sour stench — the 
essence of long-neglected abominations — and 
it cannot escape from among the tall, three- 
storied houses. " This, my dear sir, is ?i per- 
fectly respectable quarter as quarters go. That 
house at the head of the alley, with the elabo- 
rate stucco-work round the top of the door, was 
built long ago by a celebrated midwife. Great 
people used to live here once. Now it's the 
— Aha ! Look out for that carriage." A big 
mail-phaeton crashes out of the darkness and, 
recklessly driven, disappears. The wonder is 
how it ever got into this maze of narrow 
streets, w^here nobody seems to be moving, and 
where the dull throbbing of the city's life only 
comes faintly and by snatches. " Now it's the 
what ? " " St. John's Wood of Calcutta— for 
the rich Babus. That ' fitton ' belonged to one 
of them." " Well, it's not much of a place to 



City of the Dreadful Night 49 

look at?" "Don't judge by appearances. 
About here live the women who have beggared 
kings. We aren't going to let you down into 
unadulterated vice all at once. You must see 
it first with the gilding on — and mind that 
rotten board." 

Stand at the bottom of a lift and look up- 
ward. Then you will get both the size and 
the design of the tiny courtyard round which 
one of these big dark houses is built. The 
central square may be perhaps ten feet every 
way, but the balconies that run inside it over- 
hang, and seem to cut away half the available 
space. To reach the square a man must go 
round many corners, down a covered-in way, 
and up and down two or three baffling and 
confused steps. There are no lamps to guide, 
and the janitors of the establishment seem to 
be compelled to sleep in the passages. The 
central square, the patio or whatever it must 
be called, reeks with the faint, sour smell which 
finds its way impartially into every room. 
" Now you will understand," say the Police 
kindly, as their charge blunders, shin-first, into 
a well dark winding staircase, " that these are 
not the sort of places to visit alone." " Who 
wants to ? Of all the disgusting, inaccessible 
dens — Holy Cupid, what's this?" 

A glare of light on the stair-head, a clink of in- 
numerable bangles, a rustle of much fine gauze, 
and the Dainty Iniquity stands revealed, blazing 
— literally blazing — with jewelry from head 
to foot. Take one of the fairest miniatures 
4 



50 City of the Dreadful Night 

that the Delhi painters draw, and multiply it 
by ten ; throw in one of Angelica Kaufmann's 
best portraits, and add anything that you can 
think of from Beckford to Lalla Rookh, and 
you will still fall short of the merits of that 
perfect faice. For an instant, even the grim, 
professional gravity of the police is relaxed 
in the presence of the Dainty Iniquity with the 
gems, who so prettily invites every one to be 
seated, and proffers such refreshments as she 
conceives the palates of the barbarians would 
prefer. Her Abigails are only one degree less 
gorgeous than she. Half a lakh, or fifty 
thousand pounds' worth — it is easier to credit 
the latter statement than the former — are dis- 
posed upon her little body. Each hand carries 
five jeweled rings which are connected by 
golden chains to a great jeweled boss of gold 
in the center of the back of the hand. Ear- 
rings weighted with emeralds and pearls, 
diamond nose-rings, and how many other 
hundred articles make up the list of adorn- 
ments. English furniture of a gorgeous and 
gimcrack kind, unlimited chandeliers and a 
collection of atrocious Continental prints — 
something, but not altogether, like the glazed 
plaques on boii-ho7i boxes — are scattered about 
the house, and on every landing — let us trust 
this is a mistake — lies, squats, or loafs a 
Bengali who can talk English with unholy 
fluency. The recurrence suggests — only sug- 
gests, mind — a grim possibility of the affec- 
tation of excessive virtue by day tempered 



City of the Dreadful Night 51 

with the sort of unwholesome enjoyment after 
dusk — this loafing and lobbying and chatter- 
ing and smoking, and unless the bottles lie, 
tippling among the foul-tongued handmaidens 
of the Dainty Iniquity. How many men fol- 
low this double, deleterious sort of life? The 
Police are discreetly dumb. 

"Now don^t go talking about 'domiciliary 
visits' just because this one happens to be a 
pretty woman. We've gotio know these crea- 
tures. They make the rich man and the poor 
spend their money ; and when a man can't get 
money for 'em honestly, he comes under otir 
notice. JVow do you see.'* If there was any 
domiciliary ' visit ' about it, the whole house- 
ful would be hidden past our finding as soon 
as we turned up in the courtyard. We're 
friends — to a certain extent." And indeed, it 
seemed no difficult thing to be friends to any 
extent with the Dainty Iniquity who was so 
surpassingly different from all that experience 
taught of the beauty of the East. Here was 
the face from which a man could write La/la 
Rookhs by the dozen, and believe every word 
that he wrote. Hers was the beauty that 
Byron sang of when he wrote — 

^' Remember, if you come here alone, the 
chances are that you'll be clubbed, or stuck, 
or, anyhow, mobbed. You'll understand that 
this part of the world is shut to Europeans — 
absolutely. Mind the steps, and follow on." 
The vision dies out in the smells and gross 
darkness of the night, in evil, time-rotten- 



52 City of the Dreadful Night 

brickwork, and another wilderness of shut-up 
houses, wherein it seems that people do con- 
tinually and feebly strum stringed instruments 
of a plaintive and wailsome nature. 

Follows, after another plunge into a passage 
of a courtyard, and up a staircase, the appari- 
tion of a Fat Vice, in whom is no sort of ro- 
mance, nor beauty, but unlimited coarse humor. 
She too is studded with jewels, and her house 
is even finer than the house of the other, and 
more infested with the extraordinary men who 
speak such good English and are so defer- 
ential to the Police. The Fat Vice has been 
a great leader of fashion in her day, and 
stripped a zemindar Raja to his last acre — in- 
so much that he ended in the House of Cor- 
rection for a theft committed for her sake. 
Native opinion has it that she is a " mon- 
strous well preserved woman." On this point, 
as on some others, the races will agree to differ. 

The scene changes suddenly as a slide in a 
magic lantern. Dainty Iniquity and Fat Vice 
slide away on a roll of streets and alleys, each 
more squalid than its predecessor. We are 
"somewhere at the back of the Machua 
Bazar," well in the heart of the city. There 
are no houses here — nothing but acres and 
acres, it seems, of foul wattle-and-dab huts, 
any one of which would be a disgrace to a 
frontier village. The whole arrangement is a 
neatly contrived germ and fire trap, reflecting 
great credit upon the Calcutta Municipality. 

" What happens when these pigsties catch 



City of the Dreadful Night 53 

fire?" '^They're built up again," say the 
Police, as though this were the natural order 
of things. " Land is immensely valuable 
here." All the more reason, then, to turn 
several Hausmanns loose into the city, with 
instructions to make barracks for the popula- 
tion that cannot find room in the huts and 
sleeps in the open ways, cherishing dogs and 
worse, much worse, in its unwashed bosom. 
" Here is a licensed coffee-shop. This is 
where your 7iaukers go for amusement and to 
see nautches." There is a huge chappar shed 
ingeniously ornamented with insecure kero- 
sene lamps, and crammed with gharri-zvans^ 
k/iit7?iatgars, small storekeepers and the like. 
Never a sign of a European. Why.? "Be- 
cause if an Englishman messed about here, 
he'd get into trouble. Men don't come here 
unless they're drunk or have lost their way." 
The gharri-wa7is — they have the privilege of 
voting, have they not.'' — look peaceful enough 
as they squat on tables or crowd by the doors 
to watch the nautch that is going forward. 
Five pitiful draggle-tails are huddled together 
on a bench under one of the lamps, while the 
sixth is squirming and shrieking before the 
impassive crowd. She sings of love as un- 
derstood by the Oriental — the love that dries 
the heart and consumes the liver. In this 
place, the words that would look so well on 
paper, have an evil and ghastly significance. 
The gharri-wans stare or sup tumblers and 
cups of a filthy decoction, and the kunclmiee 



54 City of the Dreadful Night 

howls with renewed vigor in the presence of 
the Police. Where the Dainty Iniquity was 
hung with gold and gems, she is trapped with 
pewter and glass ; and where there was heavy 
embroidery on the Fat Vice's dress, defaced, 
stamped tinsel faithfully reduplicates the pat- 
tern on the tawdry robes of the kunchenee. 
So you see, if one cares to moralize, they are 
sisters of the same class. 

Two or three men, blessed with uneasy 
consciences, have quietly slipped out of the 
coffee-shop into the mazes of the huts beyond. 
The Police laugh, and those nearest in the 
crowd laugh applausively, as in duty bound. 
Perhaps the rabbits grin uneasily when the 
ferret lands at the bottom of the burrow and 
begins to clear the warren. 

"The chandoo-s\\o^s shut up at six, so you'll 
have to see opium-smoking before dark some 
day. No, you won't though." The detective 
nose sniffs, and the detective body makes for 
a half-opened door of a hut whence floats the 
fragrance of the black smoke. Those of the 
inhabitants who are able to stand promptly 
clear out — they have no love for the Police — 
and there remain only four men lying down 
and one standing up. This latter has a pet 
mongoose coiled round his neck. He speaks 
English fluently. Yes, he has no fear. It 
was a private smoking party and — "No busi- 
ness to-night — show how you smoke opium." 
" Aha ! You want to see. Very good, I show. 
Hiya ! you " — he kicks a man on the floor — 



City of the Dreadful Night 55 

*'show how opium-smoking." The kickee 
grunts lazily and turns on his elbow. The 
mongoose, always keeping to the man's neck, 
erects every hair of its body like an angry cat, 
and chatters in its owner's ear. The lamp for 
the opium-pipe is the only one in the room, 
and lights a scene as wild as anything in the 
witches' revel ; the mongoose acting as the 
familiar spirit. A voice from the ground says, 
in tones of infinite weariness : " You take afiniy 
so " — a long, long pause, and another kick 
from the man possessed of the devil — the 
mongoose. " You take aji77i ? " He takes a 
pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of 
a knitting-needle. " And light ajim.^^ He 
plunges the pellet into the night-light, where 
it swells and fumes greasily. " And then you 
put it in your pipe-" The smoking pellet is 
jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bam- 
boo-stemmed pipe, and all speech ceases, ex- 
cept the unearthly noise of the mongoose. 
The man on the ground is sucking at his pipe, 
and when the smoking pellet has ceased to 
smoke will be half way to Nibhan. " Now 
you go," says the man with the mongoose. 
" I am going smoke." The hut door closes 
upon a red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies, 
and the man with the mongoose sinking, sink- 
ing on to his knees, his head bowed forward, 
and the little hairy devil chattering on the 
nape of his neck. 

After this the fetid night air seems almost 
cool, for the hut is as hot as a furnace. " See 



S6 City of the Dreadful Night 

the pukka chandu shops in full blast to-mor- 
row. Now for Colootollah. Come throuo^h 
the huts. There is no decoration about this 
vice." 

The huts now gave place to houses very 
tall and spacious and very dark. But for the 
narrowness of the streets we might have stum- 
bled upon Chouringhi in the dark. An 
hour and a half has passed, and up to this 
time we have not crossed our trail once. 
" You might knock about the city for a night 
and never cross the same line. Recollect Cal- 
cutta isn't one of your poky upcountry cities 
of a lakh and a half of people." 

" How long does it take to know it then t " 
" About a lifetime, and even then some of 
the streets puzzle you." '' How much has 
the head of a ward to know ? " " Every house 
in his ward if he can, who owns it, what 
sort of character the inhabitants are, who are 
their friends, who go out and in, who loaf 
about the place at night, and so on and so 
on." " And he knows all this by night as 
well as by day ? " " Of course. Why shouldn't 
he t " " No reason in the world. Only it's 
pitchy black just now, and I'd like to see 
where this alley is going to end. " ''Round 
the corner beyond that dead wall. There's a 
lamp there. Then you'll be able to see." 
A shadow flits out of a gully and disappears. 
" Who's that ? " " Sergeant of Police just to 
see where we're going in case of accidents." 
Another shadow staggers into the darkness. 



City of the Dreadful Night 57 

"Who's thatV "Man from the fort or a 
sailor from the ships. I couldn't quite see." 
The Police open a shut door in a high wall, 
and stumble unceremoniously among a gang 
of women cooking their food. The floor is of 
beaten earth, the steps that lead into the 
upper, stories are unspeakably grimmy, and 
the heat is the heat of April. The women 
rise hastily, and the light of the bull's eye — 
for the Police have now lighted a lantern in 
regular " rounds of London " fashion — shows 
six bleared faces — one a half native half 
Chinese one, and the others Bengali. " There 
are no men here ! " they cry. " The house is 
empty." Then they grin and jabber and 
chew/<^;/ and spit, and hurry up the steps 
into the darkness. A range of three big 
rooms has been knocked into one here, and 
there is some sort of arrangement of mats. 
But an average country-bred is more sumptu- 
ously accommodated in an Englishman's 
stable. A home horse would snort at the 
accommodation. 

" Nice sort of place, isn't it .'' " says the 
Police, genially. "This is where the sailors 
get robbed and drunk." " They must be blind 
drunk before they come." " Na^ — Na ! Na 
sailor men ee — yah ! " chorus the women, 
catching at the one word they understand. 
" Arl gone ! " The Police take no notice, but 
tramp down the big room with the mat loose- 
boxes. A woman is shivering in one of these. 
" What's the matter ? " *" Fever. Seek. 



58 City of the Dreadful Night 

Vary, vary seek." She huddles herself into a 
heap on the charpoy and groans. 

A tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the 
long room, and into this the police plunge. 
" Hullo ! What's here ?" Down flashes the 
lantern, and a white hand with black nails 
comes out of the gloom. Somebody is asleep 
or drunk in the cot. The ring of lantern light 
travels slowly up and down the body. " A 
sailor from the ships. He's got his dimgarees 
on. He'll be robbed before the morning most 
likely." The man is sleeping like a little child, 
both arms thrown over his head, and he is 
not unhandsome. He is shoeless, and there 
are huge holes in his stockings. He is a pure- 
blooded white, and carries the flush of inno- 
cent sleep on his cheeks. 

The light is turned off, and the Police 
depart ; while the woman in the loose-box 
shivers, and moans that she is "seek: vary, 
va7y seek." It is not surprising. 



CHAPTER VII. 

DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. 

I built myself a lordly pleasure-house, 
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell ; 

I said: O Soul, make merry and carouse. 
Dear Soul — for all is well." 

— The Palace of Art. 

" And where next ? I don't like Colootol- 
lah." The Police and their charge are stand- 



City of the Dreadful Night 59 

ing in the interminable waste of houses under 
the starhght. " To the lowest sink of all," 
says the Police after the manner of Virgil 
when he took the Italian with the indigestion 
to look at the frozen sinners. " And where's 
that?" ''Somewhere about here; but you 
wouldn't know if you were told." They lead 
and they lead and they lead, and they cease 
not from leading till they come to the last 
circle of the Inferno — a long, long, winding, 
quiet road. " There you are ; you can see for 
yourself." 

But there is nothing to be seen. On one 
side are houses — gaunt and dark, naked and 
devoid of furniture ; on the other, low, mean 
stalls, lighted, and with shamelessly open 
doors, wherein women stand and lounge, and 
mutter and whisper one to another. There is 
a hush here or at least the busy silence of an 
officer of counting-house in working hours. 
One look down the street is sufficient. Lead 
on, gentlemen of the Calcutta Police. Let us 
escape from the lines of open doors, the flaring 
lamps within, the glimpses of the tawdry toilet- 
tables adorned with little plaster dogs, glass 
balls from Christmas-trees, and — for religion 
must not be despised though women be fallen 
— pictures of the saints and statuettes of the 
Virgin. The street is a long one, and other 
streets, full of the same pitiful wares, branch 
off from it. 

" Why are they so quiet } Why don't they 
make a row and sing and shout, and so on ? " 



6o City of the Dreadful Night 

*' Wh)- should they, poor devils ? " say the 
Police, and fall to telling tales of horror, of 
women decoyed mto palkis and shot into this 
trap. Then other tales that shatter one's 
belief in all things and folk of good repute. 
" How can you Police have faith in hu- 
manity ? " 

"That's because you're seeing it all in a 
lump for the first time, and it's not nice that 
way. Makes a man jump rather, doesn't it .'' 
But, recollect, you've <7J-/^(?^ for the worst places, 
and you can't complain." "Who's complaining? 
Bring on your atrocities. Isn't that a European 

woman at that door.? " " Yes. Mrs D. , 

widow of a soldier, mother of seven children." 
" Nine, if you please, and good-evening to 

you," shrills Mrs. D , leaning against the 

door-post her arms folded on her bosom. She 
is a rather pretty, slightly-made Eurasian, and 
whatever shame she may have owned she has 
long since cast behind her. A shapeless 
Burmo-native trot, with high cheek-bones and 
mouth like a shark, calls Mrs. D " Mem- 
Sahib." The word jars unspeakably. Her 
life is a matter between herself and her 
Maker, but in that she — the widow of a soldier 
of the Queen — has stooped to this common 
foulness in the face of the city, she has offend- 
ed against the white race. The Police fail to 
fall in with this righteous indignation. More. 
They laugh at it out of the wealth of their un- 
holy knowledge. " You're from up-country, 
and of course you don't understand. There 



City of the Dreadful Night 6i 

are any amount of that lot in the city." Then 
the secret of the insolence of Calcutta is made 
plain. Small wonder the natives fail to re- 
.spect the Sahib, seeing what they see and 
knowing what they know. In the good old 
days, the honorable the directors deported 
him or her who misbehaved grossly, and the 
white man preserved his izzat. He may have 
been a ruffian, but he was a ruffian on a larger 
scale. He did not sink in the presence of the 
people. The natives are quite right to take 
the wall of the Sahib who has been at great 
pains to prove that he is of the same flesh and 
blood. 

All this time Mrs. D stands on the 

threshold of her room and looks upon the men 
with unabashed eyes. If the spirit of that 
English soldier, who married her long ago by 
the forms of the English Church, be now flit- 
ting bat-wise above the roofs, how singularly 

pleased and proud it must be ! Mrs. D 

is a lady with a story. She is not averse to 
telling it. " What was — ahem — the case in 
which you were — er — hmn — concerned, Mrs. 
D .? " "They said I'd poisoned my hus- 
band by putting something into his drinking 
water." This is interesting. How much 
modesty has this creature ? Let us see. 
" And— ah— ^/^ you ? " *' 'Twasn't proved," 

says Mrs. D with a laugh, a pleasant, 

lady-like laugh that does infinite credit to her 
education and upbringing. V/orthy Mrs. 
D ! It would pay a novelist — a French 



62 City of the Dreadful Night 

one let us say — to pick you out of the stews 
and make you talk. 

The Police move forward, into a region of 

Mrs. D 's. This is horrible ; but they 

are used to it, and evidently consider indig- 
nation affectation. Everywhere are the empty 
houses, and the babbling women in print 
gowns. The clocks in the city are close upon 
midnight, but the Police show no signs of 
stopping. They plunge hither and thither 
like wreckers into the surf ; and each plunge 
brings up a sample of misery, filth and woe. 

" Sheikh Babu was murdered just here,'' 
they say, pulling up in one of the most trouble- 
some houses in the ward. It would never do 
to appear ignorant of the murder of Sheikh 
Babu. " I only wonder that more aren't 
killed." The houses with their breakneck 
staircases, their hundred corners, low roofs, 
hidden courtyards and winding passages, seem 
specially built for crime of every kind. A 
woman — Eurasian — rises to a sitting position 
on a board-charpoy and blinks sleepily at the 
Police. Then she throws herself down with 
a grunt. " What's the matter with you } " 
" I live in Markiss Lane and " — this with in- 
tense gravity — "I'm so drunk." She has a 
rather striking gipsy-like face, but her lan- 
guage might be improved. 

" Come along," say the Police, " we'll head 
back to Bentinck Street, and put you on the 
road to the Great Eastern." They walk long 
and steadily, and the talk falls on gambling 



City of the Dreadful Night 63 

hells. "You ought to see our men rush one 
of 'em. They like the work — natives of 
course. When we've marked a hell down, we 
post men at the entrances and carry it. Some- 
times the Chinese bite, but as a rule they 
fight fair. It's a pity we hadn't a hell to show 
you. Let's go in here — there may be some- 
thing forward." " Here " appears to be in 
the heart of a Chinese quarter, for the pig- 
tails — do they ever go to bed ? — are scuttling 
about the streets. " Never go into a Chinese 
place alone," say the Police, and swung open 
a postern gate in a strong, green door. Two 
Chinamen appear. 

" What are we going to see .? " " Japanese 
gir — No, we aren't by Jove ! Catch that 
Chinaman quicks The pigtail is trying to 
double back across a courtyard into an inner 
chamber ; but a large hand on his shoulder 
spins him round and puts him in rear of the 
line of advancing Englishmen, who are, be it 
observed, making a fair amount of noise with 
their boots. A second door is thrown open, 
and the visitors advance into a large, square 
room blazing with gas. Here thirteen pig- 
tails, deaf and blind to the outer world, are 
bending over a table. The captured China- 
man dodges uneasily in the rear of the pro- 
cession. Five — ten — fifteen seconds pass, the 
Englishmen standing in the full light less 
than three paces from the absorbed gang who 
see nothing. Then burly Superintendent 
Lamb brings down his hand on his thigh with a 



64 City of the Dreadful Night 

crack like a pistol-shot and shouts : " How do, 
John I " Follows a frantic rush of scared Celes- 
tials, almost tumbling over each other in their 
anxiety to get clear. Gudgeon before the rush 
of the pike are nothing to John Chinaman 
detected in the act of gambling. One pigtail 
scoops up a pile of copper money, another a 
chinaware soup-bowl and only a little mound 
of accusing cowries remains on the white mat- 
ting that covers the table. In less than half 
a minute two facts are forcibly brought home 
to the visitor. First, that a pigtail is largely 
composed of silk, and rasps the palm of the 
hand as it slides through ; and secondly, that 
the forearm of a Chinaman is surprisingly 
muscular and well-developed. " What's going 
to be done?" "Nothing. They're only three 
of us, and all the ringleaders would get away. 
Look at the doors. We've got 'em safe any 
time we want to catch 'em, if this little visit 
doesn't make 'em shift their quarters. Hi ! 
John. No pidgin to-night. Show how you 
makee play. That fat youngster there is our 
informer." 

Half the pigtails have fled into the dark- 
ness, but the remainder, assured and trebly 
assured that the Police really mean "no 
pidgin," return to the table and stand round 
while the croupier proceeds to manipulate the 
cowries, the little curved slip of bamboo and 
the soup-bowl. They never gamble, these in- 
nocents. They only come to look on, and 
smoke opium in the next room. Yet as the 



City of the Dreadful Night 65 

game progresses their eyes light up, and one 
by one they lose in to deposit their price on 
odd or even — the number of the cowries that 
are covered and left uncovered by the little 
soup-bowl. Mythaii is the name of the 
amusement, and, whatever may be its de- 
merits, it is dean. The Police look on while 
their charge plays and oots a parchment- 
skinned horror — one of Swift's Struldburgs, 
strayed from Laputa — of the enormous sum 
of two annas. The return of this wealth, 
doubled, sets the loser beating his forehead 
against the table from sheer gratitude. 

"J/<?>$-/ immortal game this. A man might 
drop five whole rupees, if he began playing at 
sun-down and kept it up all night. Don^jyou 
ever play whist occasionally ? " 

*' Now, we didn't bring you round to make 
fun of this department. A man can lose as 
much as ever he likes and he can fight as well, 
and if he loses all his money he steals to get 
more. A Chinaman is insane about gambling, 
and half his crime comes from it. It must be 
kept down." " And the other business. Any 
sort of supervision there .'' " " No ; so long 
as they keep outside the penal code. Ask 
Dr. about that. It's outside our depart- 
ment. Here we are in Bentinck Street and 
you can be driven to the Great Eastern in a 
few minutes. Joss houses ? Oh, yes. If 
you want more horrors. Superintendent Lamb 
will take you round with him to-morrow after- 
noon at five. Report yourself at the Bow 
5 



66 City of the Dreadful Night 

Bazar Thanna at five minutes to. Good- 
night." 

The Police depart, and in a few minutes 
the silent, well-ordered respectability of Old 
Council House Street, with the grim Free 
Kirk at the end of it, is reached. All good 
Calcutta has gone to bed, the last tram has 
passed, and the peace of the night is upon the 
world. Would it be wise and rational to climb 
the spire of that kirk, and shout after the 
fashion of the great Lion-slayer of Tarescon : 
" O true believers ! Decency is a fraud and 
a sham. There is nothing clean or pure or 
wholesome under the stars, and we are all 
going to perdition together. Amen ! " On 
second thoughts it would not ; for the spire 
is slippery, the night is hot, and the Police 
have been specially careful to warn their 
charge that he must not be carried away by 
the sight of horrors that cannot be written or 
hinted at. 

" Good-morning," says the Policeman, 
tramping the pavement in front of the Great 
Eastern, and he nods his head pleasantly to 
show that he is the representative of Law and 
Peace and that the city of Calcutta is safe 
from itself for the present. 



City of the Dreadful Night 67 



CHAPTER VIII. 



CONCERNING LUCIA. 



" Was a woman such a woman — cheeks so round and 

lips so red ? 
On the neck the small head buoyant like the bell flower 

in its bed." 

Time must be filled in somehow till five 
this afternoon, when Superintendent Lamb 
will reveal more horrors. Why not, the trams 
aiding, go to the Old Park Street Cemetery ? 
It is presumption, of course, because none 
other than the great Sir W. W. Hunter once 
went there, and wove from his visit certain 
fascinating articles for the Englishinaii ; the 
memory of which lingers even to this day, 
though they were written fully two years since. 

But the Great Sir W. W. went in his Legis- 
lative Consular brougham and never in an 
unbridled tram-car which pulled up some 
where in the middle of DhurrumtoUah. " You 
want go Park Street t No trams going Park 
Street. You get out here." Calcutta tram 
conductors are not polite. Some day one 
of them will be hurt. The car shuffles un- 
sympathetically down the street, and the 
evicted is stranded in DhurrumtoUah, which 
may be the Hammersmith Highway of Cal- 
cutta. Providence arranged this mistake, and 
paved the way to a Great Discovery now 
published for the first time. Dhurrumtol- 



68 City of the Dreadful Night 

lah is full of the People of India, walking 
in family parties and groups and confiden- 
tial couples. And the people of India are 
neither Hindu nor Mussulman — Jew Ethiop, 
Gueber nor expatriated British. They are 
the Eurasians, and there are hundreds and 
hundreds of them in Dhurrumtollah now. 
There is Papa with a shining black hat fit 
for a counsellor of the Queen, and Mama, 
whose silken attire is tight upon her portly 
figure, and The Brood made up of straw- 
hatted, olive-cheeked, sharp-eyed little boys, 
and leggy maidens wearing white, open-work 
stockings calculated to show dust. There are 
the young men who smoke bad cigars and 
carry themselves lordily — such as have in- 
comes. There are also the young women 
with the beautiful eyes and wonderful dresses 
which always fit so badly across the shoulders. 
And they carry prayer-books or baskets, be- 
cause they are either going to mass or the 
market. Without doubt, these are the people 
of India. They were born in it, bred in it, and 
v;ill die in it. The Englishman only comes to 
the country, and the natives of course were 
there from the first, but these people have 
been made here, and no one has done any- 
thing for them except talk and write about 
them. Yet they belong, some of them, to old 
and honorable families, hold "houses, mes- 
suages, and tenements " in Sealdah, and are 
rich, a few of them. They all look prosper- 
ous and contented, and they chatter eternally 



City of the Dreadful Night 69 

in that curious dialect that no one has yet re- 
duced to print. Beyond what little they 
please to reveal now and again in the news- 
papers, we know nothing about their life 
which touches so intimately the white on the 
one hand and the black on the other. It 
must be interesting — more interesting than 
the colorless Anglo-Indian article ; but who 
has treated of it ? There was one novel once 
in which the second heroine was an Eura- 
sienne. She was a strictly subordinate char- 
acter, and came to a sad end. The poet of 
the race, Henry Derozio — he of whom Mr. 
Thomas Edwards wrote a history — was bitten 
with Keats and Scott and Shelley, and over- 
looked in his search for material things that lay 
nearest to him. All this mass of humanity in 
Dhurrumtollah is unexploited and almost un- 
known. Wanted, therefore, a writer from 
among the Eurasians, who shall write so that 
men shall be pleased to read a story , of 
Eurasian life ; then outsiders will be interested 
in the People of India, and will admit that the 
race has possibilities. 

A futile attempt to get to Park Street from 
Dhurrumtollah ends in the market — the Hogg 
Market men call it. Perhaps a knight of that 
name built it. It is not one-half as pretty as 
the Crawford Market, in Bombay but ... it 
appears to be the trysting-place of Young 
Calcutta. The natural inclination of youth is 
to lie abed late, and to let the senior do all 
the hard work. Why^ therefore, should Pyr- 



70 City of the Dreadful Night 

amus who has to be ruling account forms at 
ten, and Thisbe, who cannot be interested in 
the price of second quality beef, wander, in 
studiously correct raiment, round and about 
the stalls before the sun is well clear of the 
earth ? Pyramus carries a walking stick with 
imitation silver straps upon it, and there are 
cloth tops to his boots ; but his collar has 
been two days worn. Thisbe crowns her 
dark head with a blue velvet Tam-o'-Shanter ; 
but one of her boots lacks a button, and there 
is a tear in the left hand glove. Mama, who 
despises gloves, is rapidly filling a shallow bas- 
ket, that the coolie-boy carries, with vegeta- 
bles, potatoes, purple brinjals, and — Oh, Pyr- 
amus ! Do you ever kiss Thisbe when 
Mama is not near ? — garlic — yea, lusson of 
the bazar. Mama is generous in her views 
on garlic. Pyramus comes round the corner 
of the stall looking for nobody in particular — 
not he — and is elaborately polite to Mama. 
Somehow, he and Thisbe drift off together, 
and Mama, very portly and very voluble, is 
left to chaffer and sort and select alone. In 
the name of the Sacred Unities do not, young 
people, retire to the meat-stalls to exchange 
confidences ! Come up to this end, where the 
roses are arriving in great flat baskets, where 
the air is heavy with the fragrance of flowers, 
and the young buds and greenery are littering 
all the floor. They won't — they prefer talking 
by the dead, unromantic muttons, where there 
are not so many buyers. How they babble ! 



City of the Dreadful Night 71 

There must have been a quarrel to make up. 
Thisbe shakes the blue velvet Tam-o'-Shanter 
and says : " O yess ! " scornfully. Pyramus 
answers: " No-a, no-a. Do-ant say thatt.'' 
Mama's basket is full and she picks up 
Thisbe hastily. Pyramus departs. He never 
came here to do any marketing. He came 
to meet Thisbe, who in ten years will own a 
figure very much like Mama's. May their 
way be smooth before them, and after honest 
service of the Government, may Pyramus re- 
tire on Rs. 250 per mensen, into a nice little 
house somewhere in Monghyr or Chunar. 

From love by natural sequence to death. 
Where is the Park Street Cemetery.? A 
hundred gharri-wans leap from their Boxes 
and invade the market, and after a short 
struggle one of them uncarts his capture 
in a burial-ground — a ghastly new place, 
close to a tramway. This is not what is 
wanted. The living dead are here — the people 
whose names are not yet altogether perished 
and whose tombstones are tended. " Where 
are the old dead.?" "Nobody goes there," 
says the gharri-iiuan. " It is up that road." 
He points up a long and utterly deserted 
thoroughfare, running between high walls. 
This is the place, and the entrance to it, with 
its mallee waiting with one brown, battered 
rose, its grilled door and its professional 
notices, bears a hideous likeness to the en- 
trance of Simla churchyard. But, once inside, 
the sightseer stands in the heart of utter des- 



72 City of the Dreadful Night 

olation — all the more forlorn for being swept 
up. Lower Park Street cuts a great graveyard 
in two. riie guide-books will tell you when 
the place was opened and when it was closed. 
The eye is ready to swear that it is as old as 
Herculaneum and Pompeii, The tombs are 
small houses. It is as though we walked 
down the streets of a town, so tall are they 
and so closely do they stand — a town 
shriveled by fire, and scarred by frost and 
siege. They must have been afraid of their 
friends rising up before the due time that 
they weighted them with such cruel mounds 
of masonry. Strong man, weak woman, or 
somebody's "infant son aged fifteen months" 
— it is all the same. For each the squat 
obelisk, the defaced classic temple, the cel- 
laret of chunam, or the candlestick of brick- 
work — the heavy slab, the rust-eaten railings, 
the whopper-jawed cherubs and the apoplectic 
angels. Men were rich in those days and 
could afford to put a hundred cubic feet of 
masonry into the grave of even so humble a 
person as "Jno. Clements, Captain of the 
Country Service, 1820." When the " dearly 
beloved " had held rank answering to that of 
Commissioner, the efforts are still more sump- 
tuous and the verse . . . Well, the following 
speaks for itself : 

" Soft on thy tomb shall fond Remembrance shed 
The warm yet unavailing tear, 
And purple flowers that deck the honored dead 
Shall strew the loved and honored bier." 



City of the Dreadful Night 73 

Failure to comply with the contract does not, 
let us hope, entail to forfeiture of the earnest- 
money ; or the honored dead might be grieved. 
The slab is out of his tomb, and leans foolishly 
against it ; the railings are rotted, and there 
are no more lasting ornaments than blisters 
and stains, which are the work of the weather, 
and not the result of the " warm yet unavail- 
ing tear." The eyes that promised to shed 
them have been closed any time these seventy 
years. 

Let us go about and moralize cheaply on 
the tombstones, trailing the robe of pious re- 
flection up and down the pathways of the 
grave. Here is a big and stately tomb sacred 
to "Lucia," who died in 1776 a. d., aged 23. 
Here also be verses which an irreverent 
thumb can bring to light. Thus they wrote, 
when their hearts were heavy in them, one 
hundred and sixteen years ago : 

" What needs the emblem, what the plaintive strain, 
What all the arts that sculpture e'er expressed, 
To tell the treasure that these walls contain ? 
Let those declare it most who knew her best. 

The tender pity she would oft display 

Shall be with interest at her shrine returned, 

Connubial love, connubial tears repay, 

And Lucia loved shall still be Lucia mourned. 

Though closed the lips, though stopped the tuneful 
breath, 

The silent, clay-cold monitress shall teach — 
In all the alarming eloquence of death 

With double pathos to the heart shall preach. 



74 City of the Dreadful Ni^ht 

Shall teach the virtuous maid, the faithful wife, 
If young and fair, that young and fair was she, 

Then close the useful lesson of her life, 

And tell them what she is, they soon must be." 

That goes well, even after all these years, 
does it not ? and seems to bring Lucia very- 
near, in spite of what the later generation is 
pleased to call the stiltedness of the old-time 
verse. 

Who will declare the merits of Lucia — dead 
in her spring before there was even 2,Hickefs 
Gazette to chronicle the amusements of Cal- 
cutta, and publish, with scurrilous asterisks, 
the Iiaiso?is of heads of departments? What 
pot-bellied East Indiaman brought the "virtu- 
ous maid " up the river, and did Lucia " make 
her bargain," as the cant of those times went, 
on the first, second, or third day after her 
arrival ? Or did she, with the others of the 
batch, give a spinsters' ball as a last trial — 
following the custom of the country ? No. 
She was a fair Kentish maiden, sent out, at a 
cost of five hundred pounds, English money, 
under the captain's charge, to wed the man of 
her choice, and he knew Clive well, had had 
dealings with Omichand, and talked to men 
who had lived through the terrible night in 
the Black Hole. He was a rich man, Lucia's 
battered tomb proves it, and he gave Lucia all 
that her heart could wish. A green-painted 
boat to take the air in on the river of evenings. 
Coffree slave-boys who could play on the 
French horn, and even a very elegant, neat 



City of the Dreadful Night 75 

coach with a genteel rutlan roof ornamented 
with flowers very highly finished, ten best 
polished plate glasses, ornamented with a few 
elegant medallions enriched with mother-o'- 
pearl, that she might take her drive on the 
course as befitted a factor's wife. All these 
things he gave her. And when the convoys 
came up the river, and the guns thundered, 
and the servants of the Honorable the East 
India Company drank to the king's health, be 
sure that Lucia before all the other ladies in 
the fort had her choice of the new stuffs from 
England and was cordially hated in conse- 
quence. Tilly Kettle painted her picture a 
little before she died, and the hot-blooded 
young writers did duel with small swords in 
the fort ditch for the honor of piloting her 
through a minuet at the Calcutta theater or 
the Punch House. But Warren Hastings 
danced with her instead, and the writers were 
confounded — every man of them. She was a 
toast far up the river. And she walked in the 
evening on the bastions of Fort-William, and 
said: "La! I protest!" It was there that 
she exchanged congratulations with all her 
friends on the 20th of October, when those 
who were alive gather together to felicitate 
themselves on having come through another 
hot season ; and the men — even the sober 
factor saw no wrong here — got most royally 
and Britishly drunk on Madeira that had twice 
rounded the Cape. But Lucia fell sick, and 
the doctor — he who went home after seven 



76 City of the Dreadful Night 

years with five lakhs and a half, and a corner 
of this vast graveyard to his account — said 
that it was a pukka or putrid fever, and the 
system required strengthening. So they fed 
Lucia on hot curries, and mulled wine worked 
up with spirits and fortified with spices, 
for nearly a week ; at the end of which 
time she closed her eyes on the weary, weary 
river and the fort forever, and a gallant, with 
a turn for belles lettres, wept openly as men 
did then and had no shame of it, and composed 
the verses above set, and thought himself a 
neat hand at the pen — stap his vitals ! But 
the factor was so grieved that he could write 
nothing at all — could only spend his money — 
and he counted his wealth by lakhs — on a 
sumptuous grave. A little later on he took 
comfort, and when the next batch came out — 
But this has nothing whatever to do with 
the story of Lucia, the virtuous maid, the 
faithful wife. Her ghost went to Mrs. West- 
land's powder ball, and looked very beautiful. 



RUDYARD KIPLING'S PORTRAIT 



COUPON— VOLUME V. 



This coupon, when presented with 
the other fourteen that will be found, 
one in each volume of this edition, en- 
titles the holder to the Beautiful Steel 
Line Etching Portrait of Rudyard 
Kipling, suitable for framing, FREE. 



INSTRUCTIONS. Send the fifteen coupons, numbered 
Volumes I to XV, to the publishers, The Lovell Com- 
pany, 23 Duane Street, New York, and they will send 
you the above portrait, post-paid, free of all charge. 



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